Omicron drives U.S. deaths higher than in fall’s Delta wave
LA TimesJose Alfredo De la Cruz and his wife, Rogelia, self-test for the coronavirus at a drive-through event in Whittier on Tuesday. Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s Delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks. “Importantly, ‘milder’ does not mean ‘mild,’” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said this week during a White House briefing. University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, posted a video from its morgue showing bagged bodies in a refrigeration unit and a worker marking one white body bag with the word “COVID.” “This is real,” said Ciara Wright, the hospital’s decedent affairs coordinator. We don’t want to use it if we don’t have to.” Dr. Katie Dennis, a pathologist who does autopsies for the health system, said the morgue has been at or above capacity almost every day in January, “which is definitely unusual.” With more than 878,000 deaths, the United States has the largest COVID-19 toll of any nation.