A record-high 15 million new COVID-19 cases were reported worldwide in one week, World Health Organization officials said during a Jan. 12 news briefing.
As omicron swiftly becomes the dominant global variant, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said the record-setting number is an underestimate.
The U.S. recorded the highest case numbers of any country, with 4.6 million new cases over the week of Jan. 3-9, according to a WHO report published Jan. 11.
While cases have skyrocketed, global hospitalizations — increasingly touted by public health officials as the more important COVID-19 metric — are still lower than previous surges, according to WHO. Virus admissions in the U.S., however, have recently hit all-time highs.