Covid: Daily cases in US, France hit record
A ‘tsunami’ of Covid cases will pile pressure on health systems already being stretched to their limits: WHO
WASHINGTON/PARIS: The US has reached its highest-ever average of new Covid cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as the Omicron variant spread at a blistering pace.
The moving seven-day average of new cases was 265,427 as of Tuesday, surpassing the previous peak of 251,989 set in midjanuary 2021, a tracker maintained by the university showed.
France is seeing a “tsunami” of Covid-19 infections, with 208,000 cases reported over the past 24 hours, a new national and European record, health minister Olivier Veran told lawmakers on Wednesday.
France has been breaking infection records repeatedly over the past few days, with Tuesday’s 180,000 cases already the highest for a country in Europe, according to data on Covidtracker.fr.
“This means that 24 hours a day, day and night, every second in our country, two French people are diagnosed positive,” Veran said. “We have never experienced such a situation.”
The situation in French hospitals was already worrying because of the Delta variant, Veran said, with Omicron yet to have an impact, something he said would eventually happen.
“We have two enemies,” he said, referring to the two main variants. “As for Omicron, I would no longer talk about a wave. This is a groundswell, where several waves combine to form one massive wave,” he said.
Meanwhile, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta all registered record number of new cases on Tuesday.
The United Kingdom reported 183,037 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, a new record and over 50,000 more than the previous highest figure, government statistics showed.
WHO worried for health systems over rise in cases
A “tsunami” of Omicron and Delta Covid-19 cases will pile pressure on health systems already being stretched to their limits, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday.
“I am highly concerned that Omicron, being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. “This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers, and health systems on the brink of collapse.”
China’s Xian in Covid lockdown for 7th day
A lockdown of 13mn people in the city of Xian entered its seventh day on Wednesday, with many unable to leave their residences and relying on deliveries of necessities as new Covid-19 infections persisted.
‘Infected health workers can continue working’
Canada’s worst-hit province of Quebec, with 12,833 new cases, is trying to deal with the problem by taking the radical step of allowing some infected healthcare workers to remain at their stations. “If we had the staff we needed, we wouldn’t have to implement this measure,” Quebec’s health minister Christian Dubé said.
With inputs from Anirudh Bhattacharyya