The acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on January 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
US officials are comparing the ultra-transmissible omicron coronaviruses variant to a natural disaster as the country continues to shatter records, logging over 1.4 million new COVID-19 cases Monday and seeing hospitalizations at all-time highs of over 140,000.
The weeks ahead will bring higher numbers of cases that will affect health care systems and other essential services nationwide.
Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the Food Drug Administration, said in a Senate Health Committee hearing that they were talking about a natural disaster. We need to focus on continuity of operations for hospitals and other essential services as this variant sweeps through the population.
It has been less than a month since researchers first reported omicron and less than a month since it was found in the US. According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highly mutated variant accounts for 98 percent of coronaviruses infections.
The cases have gone up due to the explosion. The US reported over one million new COVID-19 cases on Monday. On January 3, the country set a new record of just over 1 million cases, and it also set a new global record. The seven-day average of daily new cases is now over 737,000, a 203 percent jump from two weeks ago.
The spike in hospitalizations is at the highest levels seen in the Pandemic. The US set a record for hospitalizations on Sunday at over 142,000. The US reported over 140,000 hospitalizations on Monday, an 83 percent increase over the previous two weeks. Deaths are increasing. The US reported 1,673 deaths on Monday, bringing the seven-day average to 1,663 per day, a 36 percent increase over the past two weeks.
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Being prepared for a disaster.
New York and the District of Columbia may be nearing or seeing peaks in their cases. Some Midwestern states are still early in their peaks, meaning that omicron's surge through the US may not end for several more weeks.
Health officials defended the federal response to the Pandemic in a Senate hearing. The omicron wave was called a " massive, unprecedented surge" by Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser.
He said that this is an extraordinary virus, the likes of which have not been seen in a long time. He said they were doing the best they could.
Woodcock was asked if it was time to change the country's approach to handling the disease, noting that health precautions and vaccine mandates didn't seem to avert the current omicron wave.
"You can fire a board of directors if your factory is destroyed by a storm, but I don't know whether that would improve the situation," Woodcock said.
Woodcock said that prior approaches aren't responsible for the omicron wave. She tried to shift the discussion away from politics, giving a sobering outlook for the next few weeks.
"I think it's hard to process what's actually happening right now, which is that most people are going to get carbon dioxide," Woodcock said. We need to make sure that the hospitals can still function and that other essential services are not disrupted. I think it's a good time to reexamine how we're approaching the Pandemic.
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