#accelerate#coronavirus#spread
Overseas Network, December 20. As the Omicron strain spreads, American experts warn that the speed of the Omicron strain will overwhelm U.S. hospitals, and the outlook for the next few months is not optimistic.
CNN reported on the 19th that Warrenski, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that Omicron is expected to become the "dominant strain" in the United States in the next few weeks. Experts say research on the mutated coronavirus Omicron is in its early stages, but it is very clear that the Omicron strain will spread rapidly across the U.S. and could overwhelm the battered U.S. healthcare system.
As the number of new cases surged, Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN on the 18th, "We're going to see a lot of health care workers get sick." He added, "Even if these health care workers are not seriously ill, they will be eliminated from the health care workforce. This will put a huge pressure on the health care system."
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said, "Because the Omicron strain is very contagious, if things get serious, we could see hundreds of thousands of cases a day, maybe even a million Omega in a day. Micron virus cases; even if the outbreak is not that severe, there will be a lot of hospitalizations, and the hospitals in the United States are already very stressed by the delta strain, especially in the northern part of the United States.”
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, as of the 17th local time, the United States had an average of 121,707 new confirmed cases of new crowns per day. In the past week, new cases in 14 U.S. states have increased by at least 10% from the previous week, data show. About 68,900 people have been hospitalized with Covid-19, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Data show that more than 20% of ICU beds are occupied by patients with new coronary pneumonia.
California health officials said on the 17th that they have seen the number of hospitalizations begin to rise. Officials in New York say they are seeing the highest rate of hospitalizations in months. The New York State Governor's Office reported on the 18th that the state has set a record for the highest number of daily cases for two consecutive days.
"In New Jersey, there are long queues outside testing clinics, more testing needs than in months, and people are getting sick," El Nahal, president and CEO of Newark University Hospital, told CNN. , hospitalizations have doubled in the past two weeks, and even though 46% of those hospitalized earlier in the week were vaccinated, they didn't get a booster shot.
Mark Gorelick, superintendent of Minnesota Children's Hospital, said they were already grappling with a surge in hospitalizations. "When it's 90%, 95% full, those additional, preventable Covid-19 patients come in and push the whole system to the brink of collapse. That's what we're seeing in Minnesota." The outbreak was so bad that Minnesota hospital leaders even ran full-page advertisements in newspapers declaring that they were overwhelmed by the outbreak. John Hick, an emergency physician at Hennepin Medical Center in Minnesota, put it bluntly, "I've worked in emergency departments for 25 years, and every shift these days feels like the worst experience of my career."
Officials in Oregon are predicting a severe outbreak in early 2022. "We're expecting a surge in hospitalizations in Oregon by mid-January," said Peter Greven, a data scientist at Oregon Health and Science University. "The Ormicron strain is expected to bring a large number of infected people to Oregon, and they will become seriously ill and may require hospitalization."