Omicron now represents about 95% COVID-19 cases in the United States, while Delta represents the remaining 5%, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said at a news conference of the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Wednesday.
“Over the last several weeks and over the holidays, we have seen a significant and rapid increase in COVID-19 cases,” she said. For example, “the current seven-day daily average of cases is about 491,700 cases per day, an increase of about 98% percent from the previous week.”
Hospital admissions and deaths also are up over the last seven days. The seven-day average for hospital admissions is up 63% to 14,800 per day, while daily deaths are up 5% to 1,200 per day, she said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. has had 57,649,131 confirmed cases and 832,061 confirmed deaths, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University.
