PARIS (Dispatches) – The world hit a record number of COVID infections in a week, as the WHO warned that Omicron poses a “very high” risk and could yet overwhelm healthcare systems.
The highly transmissible variant has seen case records in multiple countries and registered infections were up 37 percent globally from December 22-28 compared to the previous seven-day period, according to the AFP tally based on national databases.
A total of 6.55 million cases were detected between 22-28 December, the highest figures since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March 2020.
The surge, currently worst in Europe, has forced governments to walk a tightrope between re-imposing restrictions designed to stop hospitals becoming overwhelmed and the need to keep economies and societies open two years after the virus first emerged in late 2019.
Studies suggest Omicron, now the dominant strain in some countries, carries a reduced risk of being admitted to hospital, but the World Health Organization still urged caution.
“The overall risk related to the new variant of concern Omicron remains very high,” the UN health agency said overnight.
In U.S., the average number of daily COVID-19 cases has hit a record high of 258,312 over the past seven days, a Reuters tally on Wednesday showed as U.S. officials weigh the impact of the more transmissible Omicron variant.
The previous peak for the seven-day moving average was 250,141 recorded on Jan. 8 of this year.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, in a round of television interviews, said she was watching the nation’s case load and its potential impact on health care providers.
Meanwhile, the White House COVID-19 Response Team is scheduled to hold a news conference at 11 a.m.
While there was some data from other countries that showed less disease with Omicron, it was too early to say what the impact might be across the United States, particularly given its uneven vaccination rates, she told MSNBC.
“We may have many, many more cases and so we may still very well see a lot of severe disease in the hospitals,” Walensky said.
Ans also, Britain reported a record 129,471 new cases of COVID-19, a day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would not bring in new restrictions this year to limit the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus.
Johnson said he would not introduce new restrictions in England, but his ministers have urged people to celebrate the New Year cautiously and warned that the rules could be tightened if the health system was at risk of failure.
The British government manages lockdown restrictions for England, home to most of the UK population. Devolved authorities for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have already tightened their rules, as have other European countries facing a surge in Omicron cases.
France is also seeing a tsunami of COVID-19 infections, with 208,000 new cases recorded over the past 24 hours, a national and European record, Health Minister Olivier Véran told lawmakers.
France has been breaking COVID-19 records repeatedly over the past few days, with 180,000 cases already the highest for a country in Europe, according to data on Covidtracker.fr.
Every second, two people in France are testing positive for COVID-19, Véran said, adding that the situation in hospitals was worrying because of the Delta variant, while the Omicron coronavirus variant continued to spread.
Japan braced for a feared rebound in coronavirus cases as the highways and airports filled with travelers at the start of New Year’s holidays.
The governors of the metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka urged residents to keep end-of-year gatherings small, as more cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 come to light, including a suspected cluster at an Osaka nursing home.
Poland on Wednesday reported 794 COVID-related deaths, the highest number in the fourth wave of the pandemic, a deputy health minister said, adding the figure could be a result of delayed reporting due to the Christmas holidays.
More than 75% of those who died were unvaccinated, Waldemar Kraska said.