DC reports second consecutive day of record-breaking coronavirus cases

Washington, D.C., on Friday announced its highest number of COVID-19 cases for the second consecutive day, reporting 844 cases from the previous day.

That exceeds the number of cases that D.C. saw on Wednesday, which was 508 cases for the day.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said on Friday that she was considering reimplementing the city’s mask mandate that was lifted in November, given the spike in new cases.

The U.S. is broadly seeing an uptick in new COVID-19 cases, including more than 156,000 reported on Thursday and more than 143,000 the previous day.

The last peak in the fall, amid the delta wave, included case counts as high as nearly 200,000 per day.

The surge of cases comes as a new variant of COVID-19, omicron, makes its way around the U.S.

A former COVID-19 adviser for President Biden’s transition team warned on Thursday of a “viral blizzard” that the U.S. would see in the coming weeks.

“I think we’re really just about to experience a viral blizzard,” Michael Osterholm said during a CNN interview. “I think in the next three to eight weeks, we’re going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of delta, and we’re not yet sure exactly how that’s going to work out.”

Though data from Pfizer, BioNTech and Israeli researchers seems encouraging, finding that the Pfizer booster appears to shore up strong enough protection against the omicron variant, scientists are still trying to learn more about the severity of the new strain.