Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It is a world record no one would like to create. But the US has done it.
In the post-holiday surge, the Omicron outbreak has exploded the number of infections over one million per day, breaking the USA’s own previous records.
Already, the US has the dubious distinction of being the most infected country. It witnessed over 57 million coronavirus cases and around 850, 000 deaths since the pandemic started early in 2020.
On Monday, as Americans resumed work after the Christmas holidays, they reportedly diagnosed over one million people with Covid-19, the media reported on Tuesday.
The explosion of infection cases, showing that they have affected all aspects of human life in the US, is being blamed on the highly mutated Omicron variant. This Monday’s numbers are almost double of the previous record of about 590,000 four days ago in the US, which itself was a doubling from the prior week.
The million-mark is more than twice the case count seen anywhere else since the pandemic began over two years ago. The highest number outside the US came during the Delta surge in mid-2021, when over 414,000 people were diagnosed on May 7, 2021.
These fresh numbers came when many Americans relied on tests they take at home and often cannot report the results to the authorities. That means it could underestimate the official record of one million infections.
Mercifully, surging cases have not yet translated into severe infections or deaths, their impact is being felt across the country as the newly infected people isolate at home. As a result, hundreds of aircraft remained grounded due to canceled flights. Schools and hospitals remained closed in many places.
The surge has forced the authorities to consider a revision of some measures put in place to help guide the nation through the latest phase of the coronavirus outbreak. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shrunk the isolation period to five days for asymptomatic people testing positive for Covid-19, it also urged people to get a negative test result before venturing out again.
The latest outbreak forced many companies, like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. allow staff to resume working from home at the start of the new year itself.