The United States is now averaging over 400,000 new COVID cases a day as the Omicron variant rapidly spreads across the country. The record-breaking surge is putting a new strain on hospitals, even though early studies suggest Omicron infections appear to be milder than previous variants. In Washington, D.C., cases are up by 500% over the past two weeks. In Puerto Rico, cases are up nearly 1,000%. COVID cases are also rapidly rising globally with daily new cases surpassing 1 million for the first time as the pandemic enters its third year. In Argentina, nearly 30% of all COVID tests are coming back positive. In China, the city of Xi’an has entered a second week of lockdown. Cases in Australia have reached a new high.
he reason why we have this situation now with Omicron, just like we have the situation with Delta, is we allowed large unvaccinated populations in low- and middle-income countries to remain unvaccinated. Delta arose out of an unvaccinated population in India in early 2021, and Omicron out of a large unvaccinated population on the African continent later in the same year. So, these two variants of concern represent failures, failures by global leaders to work with sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America to vaccinate the Southern Hemisphere, vaccinate the Global South.
And we got tired of it, so we’ve decided to do what we’ve always done for 20 years. And when I say “we,” myself and Dr. Bottazzi, as you point out, and our team of 20 scientists. We make vaccines for diseases that the pharma companies
— source democracynow.org | Jan 03, 2022