Hawaii saw 74 new confirmed Omicron cases on Wednesday, with Florida and DC each reporting 24 cases of the mutant strain. The US has a total of 2,625 confirmed Omicron cases, according to data scraped from individual states' figures. New York continues to have the highest number of new Omicron cases with 442 reported on Thursday, followed by Texas with 394 cases and California, with 358 new cases. It is a world-leader in sequencing, and has so-far identified close to 75,000 Omicron infections for a population almost five times smaller than the US. At the same time, data from South Africa suggest Omicron cases are more likely to be mild, in part thanks to protection from vaccines and previous infections.
