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Omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73 percent of new infections last week — and a stunning 92 percent of cases in New York and New Jersey, the feds said Monday
The data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the much-feared Delta variant accounted for just 7.9 percent of new infections across the region from Dec. 12 through Dec. 18.
That’s a dramatic change from the week before, when the Delta variant still accounted for 74 percent of cases — far outpacing the hyper-contagious but far less deadly Omicron.
The CDC reporting region for New York and New Jersey also includes the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
“All of us have a date with omicron,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Associated Press. “If you’re going to interact with society, if you’re going to have any type of life, omicron will be something you encounter, and the best way you can encounter this is to be fully vaccinated.”
The new data from the CDC comes as city and state officials are racing to expand testing and vaccination efforts in a bid to battle back against the Omicron variant, which has fueled an explosion in coronavirus cases across the five boroughs.
The Big Apple is averaging almost 7,000 new cases a day — triple the rate of three weeks ago, figures from the city Health Department show.
That surge in cases has also pushed hospitalizations up more than 75 percent over the same period of time, but officials have repeatedly said the city’s sprawling networks of public and private facilities can handle the influx.
CDC’s estimates are based on thousands of coronavirus specimens collected each week through university and commercial laboratories and state and local health departments. Scientists analyze their genetic sequences to determine which versions of the COVID-19 viruses are most abundant.
— with Associated Press
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