President Joe Biden and top health officials on January 11 defended the government’s response to the unrelenting pandemic as daily U.S. COVID-19 cases reached a new high, largely fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is on track to infect more than half of Europeans, but it should not yet be seen as a flu-like endemic illness, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The United States reported 1.35 million new coronavirus infections on January 10, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total for any country in the world as the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing.

The highly infectious Omicron variant is sweeping the world, driving increasing cases of COVID-19 and placing pressure on an already-beleaguered healthcare system. Per a USA Today analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, the United States is reporting an average of more than 700,000 new COVID-19 cases per day.

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States were poised to hit a new high as early as January 7, according to a Reuters tally, surpassing the record set in January 2021 as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in infections.

The Omicron variant was estimated to be 95.4% of the coronavirus strains circulating in the United States as of Jan. 1, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on January 4.

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said there was still a danger of a surge in hospitalization due to a large number of coronavirus cases even as early data suggests the Omicron COVID-19 variant is less severe.

The average number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States hit a record high of 258,312 over the past seven days, a Reuters tally showed on December 29, as U.S. officials weigh the impact of the more transmissible Omicron variant.

Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is confronting another dark winter, with the red-hot Omicron variant threatening to worsen an already dangerous surge of cases.

The Omicron coronavirus variant had been been reported in 89 countries and the number of cases was doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on December 18.