The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Tuesday that America could see a massive peak of Omicron infections as soon as January.
that Europe is"facing another Christmas in pandemic mode." During her speech in the European Parliament, she added that Omicron is expected to be the dominant strain of COVID in the 27-nation bloc by the middle of January.cases already appear to be plateauing, indicated that the wave might have peaked there.
Some experts believe that this may because the variant is more infectious than delta and therefore spreads more quickly. But health officials said Friday that fewer people had died or required hospital treatment than in previous waves of COVID. A new large-scale Omicron study in South Africa, published on Tuesday, found that Omicron appears to be more resistant to vaccines, but that it's causing less severe illness. The analysis found two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered 70 percent protection against omicron hospitalization, compared to 90 percent for the Delta variant.
However, the study doesn't guarantee the impact the new variant will have in other places. For example, the less severe illness caused in South Africa by the variant could be explained by high levels of previous COVID infections, with 38 percent of the country's adult population being fully vaccinated.
Lab manager Robyn Schuman holds blood samples to be tested for Covid-19 at the Bellville Medical Center, in Bellville, Texas, on September 1, 2021. An Omicron tidal wave is about to hit the United States, early data indicates, as the highly contagious new variant spreads rapidly around other countries.
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