The United States continues to see a rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, with the highly contagious strain making up over 95 percent of new cases, data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed Tuesday.
Daily COVID-19 cases in the United States have been skyrocketing around the holiday season, with a tally by Johns Hopkins University showing that on Monday the figure topped 1 million for the first time.
"These coming weeks are going to be challenging," President Joe Biden said Tuesday ahead of a meeting on the coronavirus pandemic, noting that 35 million people in the country have still yet to be vaccinated despite the availability of vaccine supplies.
In the week that ended last Saturday, Omicron was estimated to have accounted for 95.4 percent of new cases, compared with less than 1 percent in the first week of December, according to the CDC data.
The Delta variant, which triggered a surge in cases in the summer, accounted for 61.6 percent in the week that ended Dec. 18, but was overtaken by Omicron in the following weeks.
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