Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of new US COVID cases

NEW YORK (AP) — Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S. Federal health officials said Monday (Dec. 20, 2021) that omicron accounted for an estimated 73% of new infections last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers show nearly a six-fold increase in the proportion of infections in only one week. Since the end of June, the delta variant has been the main version causing U.S. infections. Scientists in Africa first sounded the alarm about omicron less than a month ago.