Covid News: Thousands of Flights Are Canceled as Omicron Spreads

The highly transmissible Omicron virus variant is sending daily U.S. caseloads soaring to levels higher than last year’s winter pandemic peak.

Hospitalizations are starting to tick up, too, although not at the same rate as cases. It is unclear if they will continue to follow the rise in cases, especially given evidence in South Africa and Europe that Omicron may cause fewer severe cases of Covid.

On Friday, before holiday interruptions to data reporting began to affect the nation’s daily case totals, the seven-day national average of new daily cases surpassed 197,000, a 65 percent jump over the last 14 days, and hospitalizations reached a seven-day average of more than 70,000, an increase of 10 percent. Deaths also increased by 3 percent during that time, to a seven-day average of 1,345, according to a New York Times database.

The national all-time high for average daily cases is 251,232, set in January during a post-holiday surge.

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said a growing body of evidence suggested that Omicron was causing less serious illness than its predecessors. But he warned against complacency, saying the variant’s lightning-speed spread across the United States would likely lead to a perilous spike in hospitalizations among the unvaccinated and could overwhelm the country’s health systems.

“When you have such a high volume of new infections, it might override a real diminution in severity,” Dr. Fauci said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency earlier this month and put elective surgeries on…