New daily COVID-19 cases in U.S. highest levels on record, driven by Omicron

Posted December 29, 2021 8:27 am.

Last Updated December 29, 2021 9:53 am.

More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to the highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

The previous mark was 250,000 cases per day, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The fast-spreading mutant version of the virus has cast a pall over Christmas and New Year’s, forcing communities to scale back or call off their festivities just weeks after it seemed as if Americans were about to enjoy an almost normal holiday season.

Thousands of flights have been cancelled amid staffing shortages blamed on the virus.

The number of Americans now in the hospital with COVID-19 is running at around 60,000, or about half the figure seen in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

While hospitalizations sometimes lag behind case numbers, the figures may indicate Omicron is not making people as severely ill as previous versions, as many experts suspect.

COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 1,200 per day to around 1,500.

Several European countries, including France, Greece, Britain and Spain, also reported record case counts this week, prompting a ban on music at New Year’s celebrations in Greece and a renewed push to encourage vaccination by French authorities.

Confusion over new quarantine guidance

The sombre new numbers come just days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended cutting the self-isolation period from 10 days to five.

The move has been met with criticism from some medical experts as it allows people to return to normal activities after the shortened period of isolation without getting tested to see if they are still infectious.

CDC officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the virus are most infectious in the first few days.

Critics say the research the CDC is looking at is also based on older variants of COVID-19, and not on Omicron, and that the health authority is being pressured by businesses and the public sector to allow employees to return to work.

“It’s frankly reckless to proceed like this,” said Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.

“Using a rapid test or some type of test to validate that the person isn’t infectious is vital,” he said, adding, “There’s no evidence, no data to support this.”

But, Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota, says there is a scientific basis to the CDC’s recommendations.

Mansky said CDC probably didn’t include exit testing in its guidelines for logistical reasons: There is a run on COVID-19 rapid tests amid the spike in cases and the busy holiday travel season. In many places, at-home tests are difficult or impossible to find.

The CDC is “driven by the science, but they also have to be cognizant of the fact of, you know, what are they going to tell the public that they’ll do,” Mansky said. “That would undermine CDC if they had guidance that everybody was ignoring.”

The U.S. airline industry applauded the CDC move.

“The decision is the right one based upon science,” said the lobbying group Airlines for America.

But the head of a flight attendants union criticized the change, saying it could lead businesses to pressure sick employees to come back before they are well.

If that happens, “we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any `staffing shortages,”’ warned Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International.

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