Medical workers carry a patient to a hospital in New York.
The omicron coronaviruses has been detected in 77 countries worldwide and 33 states in the US, and health officials sounded the alarm Tuesday.
Since the first omicron case was detected in the US two weeks ago, the variant has accounted for 3 percent of all cases in the country. 13 percent of cases in New York and New Jersey are caused by omicron.
Surge upon surge.
Over the last two weeks, the US has seen a 49 percent increase in new COVID cases. The number of hospitalizations in the country has increased by 22 percent. Most of the cases and hospitalizations are due to delta, but that will change quickly with omicron.
"It is more transmissible, and we're seeing that in other countries as well, that it's rapidly becoming the more predominate strain," Dr. Walensky said on NBC's Today Tuesday morning. The amount of omicron in some countries is doubling every two days or so, so scientists are still working out how much more transmissible omicron is compared with delta.
Some places, such as Norway and the United Kingdom, are seeing near vertical rises in cases as omicron spreads, prompting officials to send dire warnings about towering spikes in cases. The World Health Organization echoed that concern in a press briefing this morning.
The WHO Director-General said that Omicron is spreading at a rate they have not seen before. People are dismissing Omicron as mild. By now, we have learned that we need to be careful with this virus. Even if omicron causes less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could overwhelm unprepared health systems.
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There is limited data.
According to preliminary data released Tuesday from South Africa, adults with omicron cases were less likely to be hospitalized than if they had been previously exposed. Discovery Health, a large health insurer in South Africa, analyzed 211,000 COVID-19 test results over three weeks and came up with the initial finding. There were 78,000 omicron cases. There is anecdotal evidence that shows omicron patients have milder disease, with shorter recovery times and fewer people requiring supplemental oxygen.
The data is still very limited, and it's not yet possible to draw conclusions about how omicron will play out elsewhere, according to officials in the US and the WHO. South Africa's population is younger than the US's, with nearly 60 percent of people under the age of 40. Younger people tend to have milder cases. About 26 percent of the population is vaccine-vaccinated, and many people have pre-existing immunity from a previous infection. It's not clear how omicron will behave in places with higher or lower levels of vaccination.
The South African data agreed with the data from other countries that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered less protection against the omicron variant than previous versions. The data showed that the protection against infections fell from 80 percent to 33 percent with omicron. Protection from severe disease fell from 93 percent to 70 percent.
The study found that children were less likely to test positive for COVID-19 than adults. The new variant was found to have a higher risk of children being hospitalized due to COVID-19. According to anecdotal reports from hospitals, most COVID-19 diagnoses in hospitalized children occur in children who were admitted for reasons unrelated to COVID and did not experience COVID-19 symptoms, but tested positive during routine screening.
Do it all.
The officials at the CDC and WHO are certain that we already know how to fight omicron effectively, despite the fact that we will need more data. They recommend using all of the proven health measures together.
"I need to be clear about what I'm saying," he said. Vaccines alone won't get any country out of this crisis... It's not a vaccine. It's not a vaccine. It's not a vaccine, it's hand hygiene. Do it all. Do it consistently. Do it well.
