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.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta

Now Omicron has arrived!

“The sky is not falling”, says Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor. But just when we thought that the pandemic was behind us, scientists are now racing to understand the consequences of the Omicron COVID-19 variant that unexpectedly showed up in South Africa only days ago and has already become the current Variant of Concern. And we’re learning more, in the time between writing this week’s blog and posting it we now know that the Omicron COVID-19 variant has fifty or more mutations and is currently identified in 20 countries.

READ MORE

We recently marked the one year anniversary of the declaration of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the time where many of us learned a new set of considerations for health and social interactions, along with a novel vocabulary to match. Whether you hit that socially distanced outdoor gathering or opt for a Zoom happy hour, our activities and behaviors are very different than those we knew before....