A COVID-19 “tsunami” threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, as record surges fueled by the Omicron variant dampened New Year celebrations around the world once again.
Governments are walking a tightrope between antivirus restrictions and the need to keep societies and economies open, as the highly transmissible variant drove cases to levels never seen before in the United States, Britain, France, and Denmark.
The blistering surge was illustrated by AFP’s tally of 6.55 million new infections reported globally in the week ending Tuesday, the highest the figure has been since the WHO declared a Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers, and health systems on the brink of collapse.”
In the US, President Joe Biden promised to “follow the science” when he took over from Donald Trump, but a year later record infections, testing shortfalls and stubborn vaccine resistance have turned one of his presidency’s political strongpoints into a growing liability.
Data on Wednesday showing the highest number yet of new Covid infections underlined Biden’s impotence against the mutating virus.
The good news buried behind the scary numbers is that the Omicron variant driving the new surge may be much less deadly than previous versions. So, while Americans — and people in many other countries — are getting infected in droves, the consequences are so far considerably milder.
The variant has already started to overwhelm some hospitals in the United States, the hardest-hit nation where the seven-day average of new cases hit 265,427, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Harvard epidemiologist and immunologist Michael Mina tweeted that the count was likely just the “tip of the iceberg” with the true number likely far higher because of a shortage of tests.
But there was some hope as data indicated a decoupling of the number of cases and hospitalizations.
“We should not become complacent,” top US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said Wednesday, but “all indications point to a lesser severity of Omicron”.
At a drive-through virus testing site in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday, there were long lines of cars with people waiting to provide samples.
“Half of my family has it, you know this new variant is very, very spreadable, like way more spreadable than the first time around,” said resident Victoria Sierralta.
“It’s like we’re back in the first stage of Covid. It’s absolutely crazy.”
Millions around the world will again welcome a new year in the shadow of the pandemic, which is known to have killed more than 5.4 million people so far, with festivities dampened or canceled in many countries.
Greece on Wednesday banned music in bars and restaurants to try and limit New Year’s Eve parties, with public events already canceled.
The mayor of Mexico’s capital has canceled the city’s massive NewYear’s Eve celebrations after a spike in cases.
Despite the outbreak concerns, the streets of Mexico City were busy on
Wednesday.
“I don’t think that such an event with such economic importance should be canceled, however health comes before everything else,” said 59-year-old teacher Victor Arturo Madrid Contreras.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meanwhile defended his decision not to clamp down on festivities over the holidays, saying around 90 percent of Covid patients in intensive care had not received a vaccine booster.
The number of people in hospital with the coronavirus topped 10,000 in England, the highest total since March, as Britain on Wednesday reported a new record of 183,037 daily cases.
The high take-up of boosters in England “is allowing us to go ahead with New Year in the cautious way that we are,” Johnson said, despite new closures in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Across the Channel, France too hit a new daily record of more than 200,000 cases — more than double the number on Christmas Day — as it extended its closure of nightclubs into January.
Wearing masks outdoors will become compulsory in Paris on Friday for everyone over the age of 11 except those inside vehicles, cyclists, users of other two-wheelers such as scooters and those participating in sports.
Denmark, which currently has the world’s highest rate of infection per person, recorded a fresh record of 23,228 new cases, which authorities attributed in part to the large numbers of tests carried out after
Christmas celebrations.
Portugal also saw a record with nearly 27,000 cases reported in 24 hours.
Pointing out a 126 percent increase in US cases, compared to an only 11 percent rise in hospitalizations, top government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci called the data “encouraging.”
“We should not become complacent,” he said Wednesday, but “all indications point to a lesser severity of Omicron.”
Continued uncertainty and the sheer speed of the viral spread, however, has already been enough to sow chaos, damaging Biden politically.
With fears that hospitals will be overwhelmed, airlines canceling hundreds of flights at one of the busiest times of the year, and big sports games threatened with disruption, the Democrat faces a winter
of discontent.
It’s all a far cry from the hope he inspired on taking office 11 months ago, vowing to reverse Trump’s erratic leadership and get the pandemic under control.
With the virus in steady retreat during his first months, Biden had even dared declare July 4th a day of independence from Covid-19.
Now, in the aftermath of the summer’s arrival of the Delta variant and this winter’s Omicron, Biden is under fire from all sides, with abysmal approval ratings in the low 40 percent range and disapproval
at close to 52 percent.
