In record time, the Omicron variant has become the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for 73% of new infections last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
That rate suggests that there were more than 650,000 Omicron infections in the United States last week, according to the Associated Press.
CDC data show nearly a six-fold rise in Omicron’s share of infections in just one week, and it’s even higher in many parts of the country. Omicron accounts for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.
Delta became the dominant variant at the end of June, and it caused more than 99.5% of coronavirus cases as recently as the end of November, CDC figures show.
The new data reflect the kind of growth in Omicron seen in other countries, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday.
“These numbers are stark, but they’re not surprising,” she notes.
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Concern as the holidays approach
Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency room doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the timing of Omicron’s surge is particularly troubling.
“The rapid and exponential spread of Omicron is concerning, especially five days before Christmas, as travel by road and air eclipses even pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019,” Glatter says. “Omicron is much more transmissible than Delta, with cases doubling every 2-3 days… Meanwhile, the Delta variant, which had been the dominant strain of the virus in the U.S. [before] last week, has now dropped back to about 27% of cases sequenced.”