Source::AP
With COVID-19 rampaging across the US in 2022, new statistics show that Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.
The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant.Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the variants of the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying.
With 878,000 deaths from COVID-19, the United States has had the largest COVID-19 death toll of any nation. And many experts are arguing that the rising death toll by the Omicron variant will make the death toll reach a million deaths. The average daily death toll is now at the same level as last February when the country was slowly coming off its all-time high of 3,300 a day.
More Americans are taking precautionary measures against the virus than before the omicron surge, according to an AP-NORC poll this week. But many people, fatigued by crisis, are returning to some level of normality with hopes that vaccinations or prior infections will protect them.
Omicron symptoms are often milder, and some infected people show none, researchers agree. But like the flu, it can be deadly, especially for people who are older, have other health problems or are unvaccinated.
