We begin with breaking news with CDC. In just three weeks since the first case Omicron variant was confirmed, it is now the dominant strain, proving just how quickly this mutation spreads. Omicron now accounts for seventy-three percent of new infections. And that’s a nearly six-fold increase in only one week. And with Christmas just five days away, there’s concern tonight about Americans getting on airplanes, hitting the road, and spreading Coronavirus. Today, the World Health Organization urged people to cancel some of their plans. This holiday surge has rattled financial markets around the world, on Wall Street, the Dow fell more than four hundred points, its third consecutive declines.

Not only does the CDC now say the Omicron is the dominant variant but also accounts for more than ninety percent of new cases in the New York area as well as other parts of the country. All this, as New York state breaks the record in new Covid cases for forth straight day. In New York city, where seventy-one percent of eligible residents are fully vaccinated, a race against Omicron variant. There’s a surge in demand for Covid test, and the wait could take hours. In Washington D.C, the mayor declared a state of emergency today, and new restrictions. But there is positive news today for Moderna. The company revealing a new study showing its booster provides a thirty-seven-fold increase in antibodies against Omicron compared to its two-dose regimen. And there is fresh evidence of Covid startling impact on the unvaccinated. The Massachusetts Health Department reports that those who have not receive a vaccine dose are thirty-one times more likely to test positive than those who are vaccinated with a booster. And despite reports of breakthrough cases, the CDC says, nationwide, those who are unvaccinated, are twenty times more likely to die from Covid than those who are boosted. In Texas today, officials announced the first known Covid death related to Omicron. At Houston Methodist Hospital, more than eighty percent of new symptomatic Covid cases are Omicron. It took Delta three months to reach that level, with Omicron, less than three weeks. The Director General of the World Health Organization is now urging people around the globe to consider canceling at least some holiday plans. And Americans are still traveling for the holidays, the TSA expected to screen nearly thirty million people between now and January the 3rd. Here in New York, no word yet on if the big New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square will go on as planned.

:::tip momentous

• : having great or lasting importance. 重大的

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