With a caseload nearly twice that of the worst single days of last winter, the United States shattered its record for new daily COVID-19 cases, a milestone that may still fall short of describing the true destruction caused by the Delta and Omicron variants because testing has slowed over the holidays.
As a second year of living with the pandemic was drawing to a close, the new daily case total topped 488,000 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database. (The total was higher Monday, but that number should not be considered a record because it included data from the long holiday weekend.)
Wednesday’s seven-day average of new daily cases, 301,000, was also a record, compared with 267,000 the day before, according to the database. In the past week, more than 2 million cases have been reported nationally, and 15 states and territories reported more cases than in any other seven-day period.
The rise in cases has been driven by the Omicron variant, which became dominant in the United States as of last week. So far, however, those increased cases have not resulted in more severe disease, as hospitalizations have increased only 11% and deaths have decreased slightly in the past two weeks.
