US knee-deep in pandemic chaos as New Year rung in

New York: The latest surge of coronavirus with the variants of Omicron and Delta combined has kept the US in complicated chaos of understaffed medical services as well as cancelled flights, while the federal government still pins hope on its vaccination policy to turn the table, sooner or later.
With more than 580,000 Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the US shattered its own record for new daily coronavirus cases, beating a milestone it already broke on Wednesday. Thursday’s count toppled the 488,000 new cases on Wednesday, which was nearly double the highest numbers from last winter, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The back-to-back record-breaking days are a growing sign of the virus’s fast spread and come as the world enters its third year of the pandemic,” reported The New York Times (NYT), noting that hospitalisations and deaths, however, have not followed the same dramatic increase, further indication that the Omicron variant seems to be milder than Delta and causes fewer cases of severe illness.
In the past two weeks, deaths are down by five per cent with a daily average of 1,221 while hospitalisations increased by just 15 per cent to an average of 78,781 per day, it added.
Urgent care centres across the US are grappling with what to do as the fast-spreading Omicron variant hits employees and the demand for Covid-19 testing surges. “In some instances, they are closing certain locations for a few days,” reported The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
More people are turning to the non-emergency clinics for Covid-19 testing, and at-home test kits are hard to come by. As at airlines, which have canceled thousands of flights this December, workers at urgent care centres are testing positive for coronavirus and are unable to work, said the report.