Covid cases top 50m in US

The US crossed 50 million

Covid-19 cases

on Sunday, according to Reuters tally, as the

Delta variant

continues to threaten Americans and the newly discovered

Omicron variant

spreads. After about two months of declining infections, the US has reported daily increases for the past two weeks, driven by the more easily transmitted Delta variant. The number of

hospitalized Covid patients

is rising as well, up 20% since the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November.

Over the past month, deaths have increased by 4.6%, with the country's death toll surpassed 8,00,000. Nearly half of US states have detected cases of the Omicron variant, but the Delta variant still accounts for 99% of current cases, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky has said. "If we suddenly start to see 10% of new infections being Omicron, and then it goes up the next week to 20%, that would tell us that we're in a replacement wave such as we saw when Delta replaced Alpha," said US expert John Moore.

An analysis of data shows it took almost a year to reach first 25 million Covid cases and 323 days, less than a year to go from 25 million to 50 million cases. Around 14% of people in the US, have now received a booster shot. Close to 10 million of those people have gotten the extra shots since the Thanksgiving holiday, with concerns about the Omicron variant.