China saw COVID-19 cases more than double on Tuesday from the previous day as the country faces by far its biggest outbreak since the early days of the pandemic, the Associated Press reported. The National Health Commission said 3,507 new locally spread cases had been identified in the latest 24-hour period, up from 1,337 a day earlier. A fast-spreading variant known as “stealth omicron” is testing China’s zero-tolerance strategy, which had kept the virus at bay since the deadly initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan in early 2020.
The U.S. COVID numbers continue to decline, and the nation is now averaging 33,310 new cases a day, according to a New York Times tracker, down 47% from two weeks ago. The average daily number of hospitalizations stands at 27,901, down 43% from two weeks ago. Deaths are averaging 1,170 a day, down 33% from two weeks ago, but still an undesirably high number. Globally, there have been 459.9 million confirmed cases, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, and 6.04 million deaths. The U.S. leads the world with 79.6 million cases and 965,106 fatalities.
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