In the images captured on Sunday, in the heart of downtown New York, the queues in front of the test centers never end. The entire streets are crowded with people. A hellish pace for these centers, which see thousands of people parade every day. Five months after President Joe Biden declared the United States on the verge of defeating COVID-19, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been a game-changer. And fears the worst for the weeks to come. Since the beginning of December, the number of new daily cases across the country has averaged 86,000. Fifteen days later, it was 117,000, an increase of about 35% in two weeks. On Saturday evening, New York State, the fourth most populous in the country with some 20 million inhabitants, announced for the second consecutive day a record of positive cases for the coronavirus, with nearly 22,000 infections.
In the Brooklyn neighborhood, restaurants are closing one after the other, due to an outbreak of contaminations. Just before Christmas, while New York awaited the return of its tourists, panic in the famous theater and musical district of Broadway where the cancellations of performances are increasing, because of positive cases within the troops. “We have to admit it: the Omicron variant has arrived in New York and it’s moving really fast. We have to be faster, ”Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN on Friday, a few days before the handover with his elected successor, Eric Adams. “We are in fact back to square one, maybe even much worse than in March 2020”, alarms Jolanta Czerlanis, a 54-year-old Polish woman, who has been patient for several hours to be tested .
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