The United States on Thursday surpassed 550,000 covid-19 cases newly reported by states, underscoring the lightning spread of the coronavirus across the country, with the highly transmissible omicron variant triggering a familiar round of restrictions, disruptions and uncertainty heading into the pandemic’s third year.
The number of new cases reported nationwide totaled 562,111, even with five states (Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina) not reporting, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
The spike in infections continues to snarl travel plans. Train and air passengers saw cancellations on Amtrak and across major airlines Thursday as infection rates worsened crew shortages; by Thursday evening, more than 2,800 flights in the United States were canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Travelers looking to escape aboard a cruise ship faced equally dire news after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised vacationers to avoid cruises after a spike in cases on U. S-based ships.
The uptick in cases prompted health officials to discourage large New Year’s Eve gatherings, though New York is among the cities set to forge ahead with outdoor festivities despite the warning.
Here’s what to know
- Eric Adams, New York’s mayor-elect, vowed to keep city’s first-in-nation vaccine mandate for private-sector employees.
- The number of daily pediatric covid hospital admissions in the United States surpassed 1,200 on Wednesday, according to Post data, approaching highs last seen in the summer. However, doctors have said that despite record positive results from children’s coronavirus tests, the vast majority of cases have been mild.
- With students set to return to classrooms after the holiday break, schools are grappling with how to stay open as omicron surges.
MORE ON THE OMICRON VARIANT
Hospitals, already under strain from covid cases, discourage ER visits for coronavirus tests
Hospitals in the greater Washington region are discouraging people who are asymptomatic or have mild covid-19 symptoms from seeking coronavirus tests in emergency rooms and urgent care offices, which are already struggling to treat severely ill patients while short staffed.
Amid a surge in coronavirus infections, emergency medicine physicians are seeing a sharp increase in patients seeking tests — many of whom were unable to access testing elsewhere even as workplaces and schools require negative tests to return.
“Do not come to the hospital looking to get tested,” said Bill Grimes, a vice president at the University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center, pointing to wait times as long as eight hours because of people “who frankly don’t need to be there.”
Canadian provinces tighten restrictions, limit testing amid soaring covid-19 cases
TORONTO — Several Canadian provinces Thursday tightened restrictions amid an omicron-fueled increase in coronavirus cases that has overwhelmed testing and tracing systems and pushed the seven-day average of new cases in the country up 141 percent over the previous week.
In Quebec, the hardest-hit province, Premier François Legault announced that a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. will begin Friday. Restaurants will be limited to takeout only, and private gatherings will be barred. Places of worship must close, except for funerals no larger than 25 people.
“Our experts tell us there’s a risk that we won’t be able to treat all those who need it in the coming weeks,” Legault told reporters. “I know we’re all tired, but it’s my responsibility to protect us all from this.”
The province previously implemented a curfew in January and lifted it in May.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said Thursday that it would limit publicly funded PCR tests to the most vulnerable residents who are symptomatic or to those who work in high-risk settings such as hospitals to ease pressure on inundated testing and tracing systems. Symptomatic residents who don’t belong to those groups have been asked to take rapid antigen tests, which are also hard to come by.
“We must preserve those resources for those that need it the most,” Kieran Moore, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said at a virtual news conference.
The province reported a record 13,807 new cases of covid-19 on Thursday, but analysts have said the number is probably far higher. Residents have struggled to book testing appointments, and many of those who have managed to snag one have waited days for results.
Ontario, along with Saskatchewan, also shortened the isolation period for most people who have tested positive for coronavirus infection and who are fully vaccinated from 10 to five days. Several provinces across the country have pushed back the return to school or temporarily shifted to online learning.
Hospitalizations, a lagging indicator, have increased roughly 23 percent in the past week in Canada, but they remain below the peak of previous waves. Some officials have noted that many hospitalized patients are being admitted for other reasons but testing positive for the coronavirus, but a precise breakdown of these figures is unavailable.
First they ran short of PPE, then ventilators, now staff
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Craig Daniels trained for this moment. For nearly two decades, he has worked as a critical care physician at the Mayo Clinic, one of the world’s leading hospitals. His team in the intensive care unit has helped save the lives of hundreds of coronavirus patients.
But amid a seemingly endless pandemic, he admits to some discouraging days.
“There’s this assumption that two years into the pandemic, health care somehow should have hired more people,” Daniels said as patients trickled into Mayo’s snow-dappled campus on Wednesday. “But the truth is that we are at the limit. … The people who draw blood. The people who work night shifts. The people who sit in rooms with patients who are delirious. They’re tired. We’re all tired.”
Doctors at this elite institution are confronting the same challenges as their colleagues everywhere: exhaustion, burnout and exasperation at patients who still refuse to mask up and get vaccinated. And that was before the arrival of omicron, the most transmissible variant yet, which is sickening staffers as well as patients and fueling workforce shortages.
Amtrak cancels dozens of trains because of weather, coronavirus cases among workers
Amtrak said Thursday that it will reduce its schedule between New Year’s Eve and Jan. 6 as it battles bad weather in some parts of the country and a surge in coronavirus cases among its employees.
About two dozen trains on both its Northeast Corridor and long-distance routes will be affected.
“Amtrak regrets any inconvenience,” the railroad said in a statement. “We are continuing to monitor changing conditions and will make any further adjustments as required.”
Amtrak says 97 percent of its workforce is vaccinated against the coronavirus, but it has seen an increase in positive cases in line with the surge around the country. The railroad had said earlier this week the surge wasn’t leading to cancellations.
Florida’s record for new coronavirus cases prompts criticism by Democrats of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s response
As Florida reported nearly 47,000 new coronavirus cases, again shattering its single-day record since the start of the pandemic, Democrats and critics called on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to do more to address the state’s spike in infections driven by the highly-transmissible omicron variant.
The state on Wednesday reported 46,923 new cases from Tuesday, as the omicron surge nearly doubled Florida’s previous peak over the summer. The state, which broke the record for new daily infections that was just set on Christmas Eve, is now averaging more than 30,300 new covid-19 cases a day, according to data tracked by The Washington Post — second in the nation to New York.
NYC to forge ahead with New Year’s Eve gathering in Times Square despite record coronavirus infections
Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said New York’s iconic ball drop in Times Square will go ahead as planned even as health officials urge the public to scale back large New Year’s Eve gatherings as coronavirus infections from the omicron variant surge.
“Shutdowns are not the answer,” De Blasio said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show.
They mayor, whose eight-year term ends when the ball drops at midnight Friday, said the decision to continue with festivities was made in concert with the city’s health advisers. The event has already been downsized and restricted: Revelers must be fully vaccinated and masked, while the number of attendees is limited to about a quarter of the usual size to allow for physical distancing. According to the city’s website, the Times Square ball drop draws an average of 58,000 people each Dec. 31.
“Our health-care leadership believes this is the right way to do it,” de Blasio said. “And our colleagues at the Times Square Alliance, they believe adamantly, and I agree with them, we’ve got to send a message to the world — New York City’s open.”
The festivities, which are expected to draw about 15,000 people to midtown Manhattan, are the kinds of gatherings some health experts have urged people to avoid this year.
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, advised people to be wary of larger events, saying small gatherings with vaccinated loved ones are safest.
“When you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you do not know the status of their vaccination, I would recommend strongly: Stay away from that this year,” Fauci said this week in an interview with CNN.
CDC warns against taking cruises after 5,000 new coronavirus cases in past 2 weeks
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that all travelers — even those who are vaccinated — should avoid cruises.
In a statement, the agency said cruise lines reported 5,013 cases of coronavirus infection on ships operating in U.S. waters between Dec. 15 and 29, a massive increase from the 162 cases reported over the previous two weeks.
The CDC escalated the travel health notice for cruising from Level 3 to 4, its highest. Previously, the advice was that people who were not fully vaccinated or those at increased risk of severe illness should not cruise.
“This reflects increases in cases onboard cruise ships since identification of the Omicron variant,” the CDC said.
The update comes as 91 ships carrying passengers from U.S. waters have reported cases over the past seven days and met the threshold for CDC investigation.
New York’s mayor-elect to keep city’s first-in-nation vaccine mandate for private sector
At a news conference Thursday, Adams (D) announced his intent to continue the mandate that was imposed by outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and took effect Dec. 27.
“Covid is a formidable opponent … but we’re going to have a formidable response,” Adams said, leaving New York City Health Commissioner Dave A. Chokshi to make the actual announcement about the mandate.
“The private-sector employer mandate will stay in effect in the new year, with a focus on compliance, not punishment,” Chokshi said.
De Blasio announced the first-in-the-nation private-sector vaccine mandate just as cases of the omicron variant were starting to surge, expanding on an October mandate that applied to all employees of New York City.
The private-sector rule requires every business in New York with more than one employee to verify that all on-site workers have been vaccinated; the mandate does not apply to people working remotely or those with religious or medical exemptions.
Pfizer-BioNTech boosters for 12-to-15-year-olds expected to have FDA authorization by early next week
The Food and Drug Administration is expected by early next week to authorize booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for 12-to-15-year-olds, according to two people familiar with the FDA’s plan.
Some FDA officials had originally hoped to authorize a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week but had faced scheduling challenges with the holidays, according to the people with knowledge of the agency’s plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe developing actions.
1,000 flights canceled Thursday as airlines struggle to recover from omicron, weather disruption
Elevated numbers of flight cancellations stretched into another day Thursday, as carriers continued their scramble to get travelers to their destinations amid a coronavirus spike that has led to staffing shortages and weather that has slowed operations — and in some cases, left crews stuck in the wrong cities.
As of Thursday morning, more than 1,000 flights within, into and out of the United States had been canceled for the day, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. If airline operations follow the pattern of recent days, the number is likely to grow. According to FlightAware, 540 flights scheduled for Friday already have been canceled.
After high-profile breakdowns over the summer and fall, concerns arose about whether carriers would be able to cope with passenger volumes during the busy holiday season to end the year. Airlines passed their first major test over Thanksgiving, but Christmas has proved to be a different story, leaving thousands of frustrated air travelers unable to return home from holiday celebrations.
While cancellations are widespread, United Airlines remains the hardest-hit among major carriers, with 190 flights canceled Thursday, roughly 8 percent of its schedule. JetBlue, which announced Wednesday that it would reduce the number of flights it offers through Jan. 13, had 175 flights canceled as of Thursday morning. Regional carrier SkyWest also continued to be plagued by operational difficulties.
Johnson & Johnson booster dramatically curbs hospitalizations, South African study suggests
The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, looked at hospital admissions from mid-November to mid-December, as the country experienced a wave of omicron-variant infections, and compared the boosted health-care workers with people who had not been vaccinated. It found that the booster was about 85 percent effective in preventing hospital admissions linked to covid-19, one to two months after the second dose.
India’s Corbevax vaccine was developed at a Texas hospital. Its developers won’t personally get money from it.
For some vaccine developers, the coronavirus pandemic has had a silver lining in billions of dollars in profit. But a new vaccine rolling out soon in India is taking the opposite approach: Its developers are getting zilch.
“We’re not trying to make money,” said Peter Hotez of the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development. “We just want to see people get vaccinated.”
On Tuesday, the Indian government granted emergency approval to Corbevax, a vaccine manufactured by Hyderabad-based company Biological E. This “second generation” coronavirus vaccine was developed by Hotez and his longtime collaborator, Maria Elena Bottazzi. It was then licensed to Biological E through a commercialization team at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where both developers also work. Hotez and Bottazzi won’t personally get a penny from it, but their employer Baylor University will get a fee
Biological E has ambitious plans to produce more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine in 2022.
Some governments are easing rules for isolation, citing dangers of economic and health-care strains from omicron’s spread
The omicron variant’s swift global spread is prompting some governments to shorten quarantine requirements for fear that the rising numbers of people being sent into isolation for infections or exposures could cripple economies, schools and health-care systems.
Governments say these are pragmatic responses to a changing virus. But constantly shifting guidelines have also led to widespread confusion over the rules, and to accusations that leaders have crafted policies around business and political prerogatives rather than public health priorities.
Similar debates have erupted in the United States since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week shortened its required isolation for infected health-care workers amid omicron’s spread. Criticism escalated when the CDC said Monday that anyone vaccinated and asymptomatic — not just those in the health-care sector — could leave isolation without testing after five days.
Coronavirus risk calculations get harder as a study suggests rapid tests may be less effective at detecting omicron
As the coronavirus spawns a record-breaking wave of infections, new research suggests that rapid tests widely used to identify potential covid-19 cases might be less effective at identifying illness caused by the swiftly spreading omicron variant.
The finding is the latest complication for anyone trying to strike a common-sense balance between being vigilant and returning to normalcy as the country approaches the third year of the pandemic.
The research, issued Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration and produced by the National Institutes of Health, said the rapid antigen tests — which have been in high demand and often hard to find this holiday season — “do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.”
