The increase in Omicron cases in many parts of the United States seems to be slowing down, and the number of people going to the emergency room has dropped significantly. The picture shows Los Angeles citizens queuing for testing. (Getty Images)

(We Chinese in America Media Editor Tang Zhao, January 14, 2022) Public health officials and infectious disease experts say the Omicron outbreak from Mid-Atlantic to New England is beginning to show signs of slowing; they are cautious but optimistic that a turnaround may be expected, and the U.S. Omicron outbreak may be like the U.K., which has seen a slowdown and other countries.

A variant of the Omicron virus has pushed U.S. cases and hospitalizations to new highs, but public health officials and experts this week began to see early signs that the outbreak is nearing a peak or stabilizing in parts of the Northeast.

Newly confirmed cases in New York City increased by more than 20 times in December but have leveled off in the past few days; New Jersey and Maryland also saw a slight decline in new confirmed cases this week, as the epidemic data in many large cities. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said this week: "It looks like we may be crossing the peak of the epidemic."

"Sudden drop in the amount of coronavirus detected in wastewater"

"We try not to predict the development of the new coronavirus, because it always surprises us," said Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, "but at least the amount of the new coronavirus was detected in the wastewater has plummeted, and we hope that means cases will plummet, and hospitalizations and deaths will follow."

Previous new coronavirus variants tended to have a longer cycle of high and low peaks, usually after an outbreak, cases continued to climb for about two months before declining; Omicron has high transmissibility and can spread faster, which means it will be infected high-risk groups more quickly.

Experts warn: the state of emergency is not over yet

Many experts believe Omicron cases will decline as fast as it climbs.

The current state of emergency is not over, though, and Omicron cases are only nearing a peak in the places where the outbreak first started, mainly in the Northeastern states, while cases in other states are still climbing.

According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, nearly 895,000 new cases of new coronary pneumonia and more than 2,400 people died in the United States on the 12th; the average daily new diagnosis in the past week exceeded 786,000 cases. That’s a 159% increase from the daily average two weeks ago. More than 151,000 people in the U.S. are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Confirmation rates in seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia, Kansas, and Mississippi, began to flatten; Washington saw a 19 percent drop in new cases last week.

UK appears to have crossed the Omicron peak

The UK appears to have crossed the peak of the outbreak caused by Omicron, showing that Omicron is highly transmissible but short-lived, which may be good news that the epidemic is fading. Scientists say the U.K. outbreak data is good news for the U.S. and other countries, suggesting that Omicron is expected to replicate the South African model, where cases spiked for about a month before plummeting.

(Source: Compiled from Online Information)