An astonishing statistic that demonstrates how much more contagious the Omicron variant is, compared to previous versions of SARS-CoV-2: One-third of all Covid-19 cases in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic have occurred in the past two months.
According to Worldometers, as of yesterday, the U.S. has 75.2 million Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. (These numbers are undercounts, because not everyone who tests positive with an at-home test reports it to their doctor or public health authorities.) The country hit 50 million cases on December 3, 2020 – meaning more than 25 million cases have occurred since that date.
Worldometers puts the total U.S. death count from Covid-19 at 905,661; on December 3, the country had 812,495 Covid-19 deaths — meaning 93,166 deaths in roughly the past two months. That’s not good, obviously, but it reflects what we would expect to see when a milder virus hits a population that has higher levels of protection from vaccination, boosters, and past infection.
And just as the Omicron wave increased quickly, it is decreasing quickly. The seven-day moving average of new cases in the U.S. leaped from 108,501 on December 3 to 813,613 on January 13. As of yesterday, that average declined to 544,583. We’ve probably got a few more weeks before we get to those pre-Omicron wave numbers, but the caseload numbers are moving in the right direction.