California’s New Daily Covid Case Count Doubles In One Week As Omicron Takes Over

With infections still surging, Los Angeles County’s cumulative number of Covid cases throughout the pandemic surpassed the 2 million mark today, with 43,582 new cases confirmed. Those new cases lifted the county’s cumulative case total to 2,010,964 since the pandemic began. Daily cases in the county set an all-time high on Sunday at 45,584.

California Governor Gavin Newsom offered details about the impact of Omicron during a press conference about his 2022-2023 budget proposal.

“I think for the next two weeks, we’re going to continue to see our case rates rise,” said Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday. That statement was made more ominous by the fact that, on that very day, the county recorded a record number of new daily cases for the pandemic. At 37,000, the new tally was 10,000 cases higher than the previous record. It’s hard to imagine where two more weeks of increases will lead.

The Omicron surge in Los Angeles County is showing no signs of slowing down.

California Governor Gavin Newsom today announced he has activated the California National Guard to support local communities with additional testing facilities and capacity amid the surge in Covid cases driven by the Omicron variant.

Los Angeles County’s 43,712 new Covid infections today is the highest daily total of the entire pandemic, breaking a record set just 24 hours before, when 37,215 new cases were announced. Thursday’s number had, in turn, skyrocketed up over 10,000 cases from 26,754 the day before.

Experts are concerned over a new Covid variant discovered in the south of France.

Los Angeles reported the highest number of new, daily Covid cases since the pandemic began on Friday. The previous record was set almost exactly one year ago, during the peak of the winter surge. On January 4, the county saw 21,849 new infections, according to its data dashboard. Today, the 24-hour count rose to 27,091, a new record and up about 35% from the 20,198 infections yesterday.

Stopping short of a lockdown or the addition of curfews as some other European countries have imposed recently, France is introducing new measures to combat the spread of the Omicron variant. Chief among them affecting the entertainment industry is that consuming food and drink in cinemas will be banned beginning Monday, January 3, for a period of three weeks.

Griffin Dunne, who directed a 2017 film documentary about his aunt, literary giant Joan Didion, has issued a statement on her passing.

Almost 30,000 people tested positive for coronavirus in just one week in Greater Manchester - as infection rates continue to soar in all ten boroughs.

“Fifty percent of all of the sequenced genomes identify themselves as Omicron,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday. He was speaking of the positive Covid tests and wastewater in the state that have been examined for new cases of the variant. Newsom then hinted that numbers to be released today would be even higher.

Coronavirus infection rates have risen in all ten of Greater Manchester's boroughs - and have hit record high levels in four of them.

Giant cinema chain AMC Theatres said it’s reached lease agreements and plans to reopen theatres in the Los Angeles and Chicago markets — beginning operations at AMC Northridge Fashion Center 10, a Pacific theatre, in Northridge, Calif., in the and at the AMC Chicago 14, formally an Arclight location in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, under their new names in spring of 2022.

More than 100,000 lab-confirmed daily cases of Covid-19 have been recorded for the first time ever in the UK.

Asked Sunday on CNN whether he expected a record numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths as a result of the Omicron variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci responded, “Yes, well, unfortunately, I think that that is going to happen.”