According to Johns Hopkins University, as of this writing, there have been 53,170,421 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. resulting in 820,708 deaths. Due to the large surge of omicron cases, the mortality rate has actually slipped from 1.6% to 1.5%.
However, the omicron variant has seen a surge of hospitalizations among children. It is not clear how many of these children are eligible for COVID. Presently, children between the ages of 5 and 11 are eligible for a modified version of the Pfizer vaccine while children between the ages of 12 and 17 get the adult version of the Pfizer vaccine. A surge in hospitalization among this population will certainly complicate the anticipated surge of hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults.
When we reached 52 million cases on Christmas Day, I thought we would add at least a million cases before the end of 2021. It looks like I was off by a million cases as we will surely another million cases by December 31st.
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