U.S. sees worrisome growth in COVID-19 deaths despite declines in cases, hospitalizations

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The United States has seen worrisome growth in COVID-19 deaths despite declines in cases and hospitalizations, with daily death count surpassing 3,500 for the first time in about a year.

The daily COVID-19 death count in the country stood up to 3,506 on Friday, approaching the record high of about 4,000 in mid-January 2021, according to data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About 2,000 Americans are dying from COVID-19 each day, ticking up from December. COVID-19 deaths, which often lag days to weeks behind outbreaks, are still increasing nationally.

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to increase, driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant, but growth rates have started to decline.

As of Jan. 19, the country was averaging about 745,000 new daily cases nationwide, a decrease of 5 percent from the previous week, according to CDC data.

The country is currently averaging about 19,000 new hospital admissions each day, an 11.7 percent drop from the record high seven-day average of 21,592 logged in the week ending Jan. 15 this year, CDC data show.

The Omicron variant continued to be dominant in all infection cases, with the CDC predicting the national proportion of Omicron to be 99.5 percent for the week ending Jan. 15.

The rate of new COVID-19 cases in the United States is "going in the right direction," said Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, on Sunday.

He cautioned that cases were still rising in the South and West, where Omicron outbreaks started later than in the Northeast.

Fauci said he was hopeful that in "the next weeks to month or so," the country would see a low enough level of contagion, and the coronavirus would be "essentially integrated into the general respiratory infections that we have learned to live with," allowing society to carry on somewhat normally.

Currently, about 63.2 percent of the total U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. However, 53.2 percent of the total booster-eligible population has not yet received a booster dose, according to CDC data.

Health officials and experts have been urging Americans to get fully vaccinated and boosted to protect themselves and get the surge of the pandemic under control.