According to USA Today, “A substantial increase in coronavirus infections was expected when this week's numbers came out, but nothing like this.”

The intensely rapid spread of the omicron variant and a backlog of cases from the New Year's weekend has resulted in U.S. health authorities tallying more than three times as many new cases as in any previous wave of the coronavirus -- over 1 million reported cases on Monday alone. About 1 in every 100 Americans will have been reported as a positive case in just the last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.