When this report came out (below), it was ridiculed by most people in the media.
It will happen
Omicron cases could hit 200,000 a day, modelling shows
Surging Omicron infections will overwhelm the health system unless some restrictions return, according to modelling prepared for national cabinet that also recommends bringing coronavirus vaccine boosters forward.
The Doherty Institute modelling predicts that without low-to-medium restrictions such as density and visitor limits, waning vaccine protection against the Omicron variant puts Australia on track to hit about 200,000 cases a day by late January or early February.
“Boosters alone will not be fast enough to halt the spread of Omicron,” the modelling, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, says.
The modelling by a team of researchers including professors Jodie McVernon and James McCaw says rapidly growing case numbers would lift hospitalisation rates to 4000 a day. This would push emergency departments to capacity and fill the nation’s intensive care units, with between 8000 and 10,000 patients admitted to ICUs.
It assumes only baseline public health safety measures – no stay-at-home-orders, low density requirements, no retail restrictions, schools open – and the partial test, trace, isolate and quarantine responses of a strained contact tracing system.
The modelling also assumes that, in addition to being much more transmissible than the Delta variant, Omicron causes equally severe disease, stating that “all international modelling groups are using this conservative assumption”. This is despite early data out of South Africa suggesting Omicron may be less severe.
US sets new record for daily Covid cases as Omicron spreads across country
A startling 488,000 cases were reported Wednesday, but even that figure is likely an undercount of the true number
The United States set a new record for daily infections of Covid-19 after reporting almost half a million positive cases as the surge of the Omicron variant spreads across the country.
On Wednesday there were 488,000 cases of the virus in the US, according to a New York Times database. However, even that figure is likely a serious undercount of the true numbers of positive cases, due to the rising popularity of home tests and people who are infected but asymptomatic.
The seven-day rolling average of cases in America is also soaring to a new high of more than 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, even at the peak of the prior surges of Covid,” Dr James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Hospital, told CNN.
New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January during the height of the last winter peak of the pandemic, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Record case counts are being logged in states and cities across the US, including New Jersey, New York and Chicago. In Georgia, 200 national guard troops are helping staff testing sites and hospitals and in Arizona and New Mexico, federal medical personnel have deployed to bolster the local health services.
The fast-spreading mutant version of the virus has cast a pall over Christmas and the new year, forcing communities to scale back or call off their festivities just weeks after it seemed as if Americans were about to enjoy an almost normal holiday season.
The number of Americans now in the hospital with Covid-19 is running at around 60,000, or about half the figure seen in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported.
While hospitalizations sometimes lag behind cases, the hospital figures may reflect both the protection conferred by the vaccine and the possibility that Omicron is not making people as sick as previous versions.
Covid-19 deaths in the US have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 1,200 per day to around 1,500.
I wonder if CNN has the Covid-19 tracker on their screens? It's all Trumps fault hey...