CDC Predicts: COVID Cases To Jump 55% By Christmas Day, Surge 73% By Jan. 8 As Omicron Moves In

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has put out new predictions on the havoc the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the illness that causes COVID-19, will wreak on the U.S. in the coming weeks, and their predictions are grim.

COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73% to 15,600 a week by January 8 and cases will leap to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day, the CDC said. New projections released Wednesday show there will be some 15,600 new COVID deaths a week as of January 8 — more than 2,200 deaths per day. That’s a 58% jump from the 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, which equals nearly 1,300 deaths a day.

The prediction that as many as 1.3 million Americans will be diagnosed with COVID-19 by the week that ends Christmas Day represents a 55% jump from the 840,000 cases diagnosed over the last week. The CDC also said hospitalizations will soar to more than 18,000 by the end of the first week in January.

Dr. Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told the Daily Mail that “an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner.”

“As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,” he told the UK paper. “This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.”

“This is hyper transmissible,” the doctor said.

While numerous reports, including this one from the Associated Press, say early indications are that the variant spreads more rapidly but results in milder symptoms, the CDC is worried that many Americans have not yet had booster shots, which pharmaceutical companies say will help alleviate the symptoms and keep people from being hospitalized.

On Friday, the CDC said eight out of 10 people who have caught the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 were fully vaccinated. Based on an examination of diagnoses from December 1-8, there were 43 cases attributed to Omicron; 34 were among people who had been “fully vaccinated.” What’s more, one-third of the 34 had also received a third “booster” shot. Just one of those suffering from the Omicron variant was briefly hospitalized.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser on COVID-19, said on Sunday that “the early data indicates that Omicron may not pose as great a risk of serious illness as the Delta variant, but stressed that further information is needed before he can definitively confirm that,” The Daily Mail reported.

Fauci said federal officials are “continuing to evaluate” whether to urge Americans to get a booster shot to be considered fully vaccinated for COVID-19. “For official requirements, it’s still two shots of the mRNA and one shot of the J&J for the official determination of what’s required or not,” Fauci told ABC News on Sunday.

Last Wednesday, Pfizer-BioNTech said that initial results from studies examining how well their vaccine protects against a new coronavirus variant found that a booster shot — on top of a two-dose vaccine regimen — neutralizes Omicron in lab studies.

The pharmaceutical company said that just two shots showed decreased protection in studies, but a booster dose significantly raises protection.

“According to the companies’ preliminary data, a third dose provides a similar level of neutralizing antibodies to Omicron as is observed after two doses against wild-type and other variants that emerged before Omicron,” they said in a press release.

“These antibody levels are associated with high efficacy against both the wild-type virus and these variants. A third dose also strongly increases CD8⁺ T cell levels against multiple spike protein epitopes, which are considered to correlate with the protection against severe disease. Compared to the wild-type virus, the vast majority of these epitopes remain unchanged in the Omicron spike variant,” the release said.