EU Surpasses Record 1M COVID Cases Daily

The Omicron strain of the coronavirus is spreading quickly around the world. After the US surpassed one million new cases per day earlier this week, now the European Union (EU), as well, is passing that unfortunate milestone, Alexandru Micu reported for ZME Science.

Photo Insert: HUS personnel receive their booster shot

Following the New Year’s weekend, the US on Monday reported 1,082,549 new cases of coronavirus infections inside its borders, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Although the number of cases reported on Mondays is typically higher than those on other days, due to delays in how tallying is processed over the weekend, this still marked a very worrying record. The figure was double that of the previous Monday.

Judging from previous data leading up to the week ending on December 25, 2021, the Omicron variant accounted for roughly 60% of these cases. The EU, as a whole, also reported passing this milestone on Jan. 5.

Countries like Britain and France have announced record numbers of daily new cases; Britain reached 200,000 on Tuesday, while France reported in excess of 270,000. Both of these figures are higher than any previously-seen number of new daily cases.

According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Cyprus now has the highest infection rate per capita, after reaching a record new 5,457 cases on Tuesday. As in the US, the more infectious Omicron variant is behind a large portion of the new cases in the EU.

Although this strain seems to produce less severe symptoms and generally results in fewer hospitalizations than previous variants, governments are still ill at ease over the growing number of cases.

Hospitals and health services are still under immense pressure, and can easily become overwhelmed if a large number of patients seek help at the same time; the high number of infected individuals definitely raises the possibility that this can happen.

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