Coronavirus cases from the omicron variant continue to surge across the country, even though sections of the United States haven’t seen waves of the omicron variant yet.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on “Face the Nation” Sunday that the omicron variant will peak soon in areas where it is hitting now.
- “This does appear to be a milder strain of coronavirus,” Gottlieb said. “And we also have a lot of immunity in the population. I think places that have been hard hit early, like the mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, New England, Florida, parts of the Pacific Northwest, are maybe two weeks away from peaking, but the rest of the country probably faces a hard month ahead of us.”
Gottlieb said the omicron variant will strike multiple areas next.
- “I don’t think you’re gonna start to see a national peak until we get into February, because there’s parts of the country that really haven’t been hard hit by omicron yet. And the virus will spread around in the country.”
Utah is one state that has seen a rise in cases recently. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said last week that “the next few weeks may be a little bumpy” for the state of Utah when it comes to the omicron variant. But the peak will hopefully happen soon, he said.
- “The best news is that several experts now believe this wave will help us move from pandemic to endemic phase and get things back to normal,” the governor said, per the Deseret News.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in December that the omicron variant wave will last into January 2022, with cases peaking in that month according to The Washington Post.
- The CDC warned that the “current increases in omicron cases are likely to lead to a national surge in the coming weeks with peak daily numbers of new infections that could exceed previous peaks.”