Omicron accounts for many more U.S. deaths than delta surge

The omicron wave is breaking, but deaths, which lag cases by as much as several weeks, have surpassed the numbers from the delta wave and are still increasing in much of the country.

In 14 states, the average daily death toll is higher now than it was two weeks ago. They are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

Since Nov. 24, when South Africa first reported the omicron variant to the World Health Organization, the United States has confirmed more than 30,163,600 new infections and more than 154,750 new deaths. (Whilethe U.S. did notinitially identify any omicron cases until Dec. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has since confirmed that the variant was in

the country at least a week earlier.) By comparison, from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31, a similar duration cover

ing the worst of the delta surge in the U.S., the country confirmed 10,917,590 new infections and 132,616 new deaths.

That makes the official case count about 176% higher during the omicron wave than in the equivalent-length delta period. (The true case count is higher still, because, more so than during the delta wave, many people have been using at-home tests whose results are not included in government statistics.) The death toll during the omicron wave is about 17% higher so far than the death toll in the delta wave.

On one hand, the gap between the increase in cases and the increase in deaths reflects omicron’s somewhat lower virulence compared with previous variants, as well as that omicron is far more likely to cause breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, who are far less likely to die from it than unvaccinated people. Deaths also remain lower than in last winter’s surge, before vaccines were widely available: 233,102 deaths were reported from Nov. 24, 2020, to Feb. 18, 2021, compared with 154,757 from Nov. 24, 2021, to Feb. 18, 2022.

But the painful absolute numbers — more than 150,000 Americans dead — underscore the U.S.’s continuing vulnerability. Many chronically ill people remain at high risk even after vaccination.Nationally, deaths have begun to decline and are down 13% from two weeks ago.But an average of about 2,300 people — more than the death toll of Hurricane Katrina — are still dying every day.