“It’s part of the winter wave, part of the long term, which is why we put so many strategies and mitigation in place early on to help provide flexibility to hospitals and clinics. health systems, ”New Hampshire Gov. Chris said. Sununu said Wednesday.

“Omicron continues to burn across the Commonwealth, increasing to levels we have never seen before. Omicron is significantly more contagious than even the Delta variant,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said on Monday. “If it spreads at the rate that we are seeing, it will definitely fill our hospitals.”

“The problem is that right now we have hospitals where there aren’t enough nurses to take care of arriving patients, Covid patients and non-Covid patients,” Spencer told Laura Coates from CNN Wednesday.

“This is exactly why we need to do everything we can to try to limit the number of people infected, not just those who are older or unvaccinated or unboosted, but everyone. Because every infection has the potential for infect more people. We need to do what we can to slow this spread now and take the pressure off our hospitals, “Spencer said.

For those who come to emergency rooms for non-Covid reasons but test positive, hospitals must still invoke quarantine protocols for these patients, which puts a strain on operations, he said. . And it can have an effect on all patients.

“Right now we are still seeing sick people who need oxygen, the vast majority of whom are not vaccinated. But a lot of the patients we are seeing now have underlying chronic conditions that are exacerbated,” Spencer said. .

These patients, he said, can include “someone who contracts Covid is dehydrated and needs to stay in hospital, or someone who contracts Covid and who is too weak and cannot go home because there is a risk of falling. It isn’t as bad in a way as the kind of classic Covid patients we were seeing before. But every patient who has to stay in the hospital takes a bed. And the beds and the staff are what are lacking at the moment. “

CDC to update mask guide

The United States has averaged more than 771,580 new cases of Covid-19 per day over the past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than three times the peak average from last winter. (251,987 on January 11, 2021) and more than 4.5 times the peak of the Delta surge (166,347 on September 1).

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to update information on wearing masks, including the different levels of protection that various masks – such as cloth, surgical, or N95 masks – offer against the spread. of Covid-19, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told a virtual White House briefing on Wednesday.

Overall, it’s important that people wear whatever face mask they have access to, “but Omicron has changed that a bit because it’s so transmissible that we know masks are even more important.” Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CNN on Wednesday.

Vaccines that work for adolescents, study finds

The country has recorded an average of 1,817 Covid-19 deaths per day over the past week, according to JHU data. The maximum daily average was 3,402 a year ago on January 13, 2021.

However, the CDC’s latest ensemble forecast projects a potential of 62,000 new Covid-19 deaths over the next four weeks, meaning preventative vaccinations are still needed.

The age group of Americans with the least immunization remains that of the under-18s, and a new study of actual hospital data between July and the end of October highlights the effectiveness of vaccinations even for those who, being younger, are usually at a loss. lower risk.

The results, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appears to be 94% effective against Covid-19-related hospitalizations in adolescents aged 12 to 18 in the United States. .

“The vaccination has prevented almost all of the deadly Covid-19 diseases in this age group,” wrote researchers at the CDC and a set of hospitals and universities, who found that many more adolescents hospitalized with Covid-19 were not vaccinated compared to those who were. hospitalized for other reasons.

Among adolescents hospitalized with Covid-19, 4% were fully vaccinated, less than 1% were partially vaccinated, and 96% were unvaccinated. In comparison, among those who did not have Covid-19, 36% were fully vaccinated, 7% were partially vaccinated, and 57% were not vaccinated.