US reports global record of more than 1m daily Covid cases

The US has registered more than 1m Covid-19 cases in a single day as the highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant spreads rapidly throughout the country, alarming officials and dashing hopes of a return to normality at the start of 2022.

The 1.08m cases recorded on Monday was the highest daily tally since the start of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, although the number was skewed by a testing backlog from the new year holiday weekend.

Even with the backlog, the number of Covid cases reported in the US has been at record levels for several weeks as Omicron circulated throughout the population. On Monday, the seven-day rolling case average reached a high of 469,919, according to the Financial Times data tracker, double the equivalent figure from a week earlier.

President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that vaccinated Americans should “be concerned about Omicron, but don’t be alarmed”, noting that it was “highly unlikely” vaccinated people would become “seriously ill” from the variant.

The president added, however, that unvaccinated people have “some reason to be alarmed”, and repeated his calls for adults and eligible children to take advantage of free jabs and booster shots.

“You will experience severe illness in many cases,” he warned the unvaccinated. “Some will die, needlessly die.”

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Biden said his administration would double its order of Pfizer’s medication to treat Covid from 10m to 20m doses “to be delivered in the months ahead”.

“These pills are going to dramatically decrease hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19,” the president said.

Case rates have more than doubled in the past week in 27 states, rising fourfold in North Carolina and Louisiana. The seven-day rolling average of cases per 100,000 people in Washington stood at 2,135, while in New Jersey and New York it stood at 1,929 and 1,820, respectively, according to the FT data tracker.

The deluge of cases has resulted in huge disruption to travel, as staffing shortages forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights. It has also prompted some employers, including Wall Street’s biggest banks, to backtrack on plans for a return to the office in January.

Hospitalisations and deaths have not matched the peaks reached earlier in the pandemic, although there has previously been a one- to two-week lag between infections and progression to severe disease and death.

The seven-day rolling average for Covid-related deaths in the US stood at 1,243 on Monday, according to the FT data tracker, up 28 per cent over the past month but well below the peak of about 3,400 during last year’s winter surge.

There are 112,495 people in hospital with Covid, with 20,927 of them in intensive care units, according to federal data, higher than in recent months but also below the zenith of last winter.

“The unvaccinated are taking up hospital rooms, and crowding emergency rooms and intensive care units,” Biden said. “That is displacing other people who need access to those hospitals.”

Federal, state and local officials in the US are still scrambling to adjust to the sharp rise in cases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month cut the recommended isolation period for people who have Covid-19 to five days, from 10, as long as they were no longer symptomatic.

However, the agency received pushback from health experts for failing to outline its recommendations on whether a person must test negative before ending isolation.

Vivek Murthy, US surgeon-general, said on Tuesday that government health officials would clarify the shorter isolation time and testing requirements this week.

Americans have grown increasingly frustrated over the holiday period by a lack of access to at-home Covid tests and long queues in cities for testing facilities.

Biden acknowledged the shortfalls and said the government was “making improvements”, adding: “With more capacity for in-person tests, we should see waiting lines shorten and more appointments freed up.”