US, MEXICO, NEPAL,UGANDA: The United States shattered the global record of daily COVID-19 cases with at least 1.3 million infections reported on Monday, according to a report, amid the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant. The previous record was 1.03 million daily new infections on January 3. As many states do not report new cases over the weekend, Mondays see an increase in reported infections. The report suggests that some states were yet to report on Monday so the final figure is likely to be even higher.
Despite the Omicron strain being reported as a less severe variant, the new variant of concern has driven the hospitalisations to an all-time high in the US. The number of hospitalised COVID-19 patients have doubled in three weeks surpassing the record of 132,051 hospitalisations set in January last year.
According to Our World in Data, the United States is reporting over 2,130 daily COVID-19 Omicron cases per million people, quickly catching up with the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Monday he has come down with Covid-19 a second time, as coronavirus infections spike in Mexico and virus tests become scarce.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote that he tested positive, after he had sounded hoarse at a morning news briefing. He contracted COVID-19 and recovered from it the first time in early 2021. Meanwhile, schools across Nepal will close for nearly three weeks after a spike in coronavirus cases, a Government spokesman said on Monday, forcing more than seven million students to stay at home. Nepal reported 841 new cases on Sunday, the biggest single-day jump since September last year, taking its total to 832,589 since the pandemic began. Its death toll from the coronavirus is 11,604.
Hospitals have been ordered to maintain adequate supplies of oxygen and keep staff at the ready. Nepal has reported 27 cases of infections with the Omicron but no deaths from it. Nepal has provided two shots of COVID-19 vaccines to 36.7% of its population of 30 million since an inoculation drive began a year ago.
Meanwhile, More than one million Indians received their third COVID-19 vaccine dose on Monday as the country rolled out boosters for frontline workers and vulnerable elderly, with the Omicron variant fuelling an eight-fold rise in infections in 10 days.
The health ministry said only 5% to 10% of the infected have sought hospitalisation, compared with 20% to 23% during the Delta-driven last wave that peaked in May. Meanwhile, Uganda reopened its schools Monday after a 20 month lock down, the longest pandemic-prompted shutdown in the world, but educators and others say that the closing has taken a lasting toll, eroding decades of classroom gains in the East African nation.
Despite efforts at remote education, more than half of Uganda’s students effectively stopped learning after the Government ordered classrooms closed in March 2020, a Government agency has found. – THE HINDUSTAN TIMES,INDIA TODAY,GULF TIMES, THE STRAITS TIMES