Where has Omicron peaked?

Could Omicron have peaked in some countries — and if so — what are the implications for the US? Lets take a look at a few charts:

The UK looks to have peaked on cases, but fatalities are still climbing — and generally very high for this country. UK cases declined this week at about a 25% rate.

Germany — looked to have peaked — likely due to delta — but is on the upswing again. Notice though that cases per capita are about one third those of the UK.

South Africa discovered Omicron — so this is a good place to focus. Too early to say if fatalities have peaked — but cases are approximately ¼ of the recent peak in December. Average daily cases also fell by about 27% week over week (similar to the UK). So looking at this chart — it seems the Omicron peak lasts about 4 to 6 weeks.

France is the #2 country in the world for new cases — around 4,000 cases per million per day. That’s almost double the rate of case creation as the US.

Over 3 million cases recorded this month to date. Fatalities this month will likely be the highest for the past 8 months.

US impact

Lets try to assess the impact on the US. The US has still not yet peaked — so hard to say when we can begin to predict the end of Omicron — but I would throw out a 3–4 week guess at this point. The challenge here is that the UK data shows a lag in the fatality curve, so hospitalizations and fatalities will likely increase still further.

So far this month (to approximately the mid month) we are at 9.5 million new cases of COVID. A pandemic record for the US.

For a moment — think about the disruption to services; flights; transportation & trucking that comes with that many people having to isolate for 5+ days.

Average daily fatalities are around 1700 — so that puts a prediction on the number of fatalities this month at around 51,000. It will certainly be the highest in the past 4 months — and possibly the highest in the last 10 months. We’ll follow up on that at the end of the month.

What’s happening inside the US

New York, New Jersey and a limited few others — may have peaked for new cases. However both have VERY HIGH levels of fatalities — over 9 fatalities per million per day. Looking at the charts it seems the peak of cases is about 5 weeks after per capita cases break through 250 cases per million per day.

A similar story plays out for Washington DC

Many states are still surging on Omicron — with no signs of peaking

Here are four neighboring states all with rising Omicron cases:

There really isn’t any state that is not experiencing very high levels of COVID cases right now:

And many states are at high levels of per capita fatalities. Indiana is currently leading the country with 13 fatalities per million per day.

Fatalities league table — 6 states have more than 10 fatalities per million per day

Southern Hemisphere

Interesting to note — that initially the Southern Hemisphere (ex South Africa) seemed to have skipped the Omicron surge — well not anymore. A hot topic right now is the Australia Tennis competiton — and the status of Novak Djokovic. Well that country is SURGING right now:

Omicron is no Djok in Australia. So far this month the highest level of positive cases since inception.

We get a similar situation in Argentina. Result — we are beginning to see the spread of Omicron in the Southern Hemisphere — so expect global numbers to continue to surge quickly.

Predictions

Expect more significant supply chain disrputions for the next month. Omicron is just starting to hit the Southern Hempisphere — and if it hits some of the key producing nations for good and electronics — this could be significant (think China; Singapore; South Korea; Japan etc)

Its not inconceivable that there will be another approximate 50,000 deaths by end February — meaning that the US could have recorded 900,000 deaths total by end Feb.

Originally published at http://jf-insights.com on January 16, 2022.