Over the most recent three-day period, the state added more than 39,000 new COVID-19 cases to its running total, which is nearing two million.
It's an average of about 13,124 cases per day.
This time last year, we were seeing a fraction of that at only 1,500 to 1,600 cases per day.
The rate of positivity does seem to be declining.
The latest data showed it hovering near 27.7 percent.
It's gone down for the fifth straight day and sits below 30 percent for the third day in a row.
The omicron variant is to blame for the most recent surge, largely because it's so highly transmissible.
But a viewer wanted to know what happened to the other variants like Delta and Beta?
QUESTION:
"With the Omicron virus running rampant, what has happened to Covid-19 and the Delta virus? Did they disappear?" -Jim, Sparta
SOURCES:
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Data Tracker
- Dr. Liam Sullivan, a Spectrum Health adult infectious disease specialist
ANSWER:
At the time of publication, cases associated with the once-dominant Delta Variant accounted for less than one-percent of the running total, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention metrics.
Alpha and Beta, meanwhile, had been all but eradicated.
"There are a few cassette players around nowadays, but they're few and far between. And they're extremely rare, because everybody pretty much listens… to music by cloud-based streaming services," Sullivan relayed. "So, it's kind of made everything else obsolete. And that's actually a good way to look at a variant."
In biological terms, Sullivan said, it often comes down to the evolutionary advantage of a strain like omicron over the earlier, less virulent mutations that have largely faded into the background.
"It undergoes evolution as it's circulating more and more through the human population, and it's finding ways to circulate and infect people easier," he explained. "It will completely displace the previous variants because they no longer have that survival advantage."
This is a principle which appeared in CDC data, assembled by the researchers who have charted omicron’s course since the mutated virus began spreading throughout the US late last year.
With delta was still dominant then, it registered just 7.4 percent of all cases in early December.
By January, the pace of omicron's spread had accelerated dramatically.
The data showed the more contagious strain made up an estimated 99 percent of all new coronavirus cases as of mid-month, pushing its precursor — the less transmissible Delta — into smaller, isolated pockets that comprised around half a percentage point of the total number of infections as of Jan. 15.
"Delta is still circulating in the US. It's not entirely gone yet," Sullivan said. "Delta's probably going to go away."
It was still too early, Dr. Sullivan said, to predict whether the arrival of omicron's eventual successor would entail a similar fate.
Want a question verified? Email the team at Verify@13OnYourSide.com.
RELATED VIDEO:
►Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this. Download the 13 ON YOUR SIDE app now.
Have a news tip? Email news@13onyourside.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.