"We're looking at probably close to a million new cases a day," Dr. Peter Hotez said Monday on CNN. "This is a full-on BA.5 wave that we're experiencing this summer. It's actually looking worse in the Southern states, just like 2020, just like 2021," said Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
That puts us in the range of cases reported during the first Omicron wave, in January. Remember when it seemed like everyone everywhere got sick at the same time? That's the situation in the United States again.
It may not seem like a very big deal, because vaccines and better treatments have dramatically cut the risk of death from Covid-19. Still, about 300 to 350 people are dying on average each day from Covid-19, enough to fill a large passenger jet.
"That is unacceptable. It's too high," Dr. Ashish Jha, coordinator for the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said at Tuesday's briefing.
