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with covid. as for adults, hospitalizations are nearing the peaks we saw in september. the spike is in undating medical staff overwhelmed for months. now health officials fear that it will show up at new year s celebrations. tom foreman has the latest on how omicron is derailing holiday plans and travel and much more. reporter: the crowd in times square will be held to about a quarter of the usual. masks and proof of vaccination required. latest surge has new york city once again an epicenter of the pandemic. with statewide cases up more than 80% since monday. and the man who becomes mayor tomorrow is vowing to shut the surge down and keep the town open. we must learn to live with covid, adjust and pivot at the right times and we re doing that in new york and i m extremely optimistic on how the city is going to respond. clearly new york and washington, d.c. are ahead of the curve. but not by much. and so expect that in the next three to four weeks we ll see everyo ....
welcome to this special edition of the lead. i m kaitlan collins in for jake tapper. we start today with our health lead. a new year and new records as the omicron variant explodes across the united states. but there is some encouraging news today out of south africa where the omicron variant was first detected. south africa now relaxing some of its covid restrictions as cases and hospitalizations have sharply fallen off leading experts to believe that south africa has already passed its peak of this horrible wave. after seeing that data, dr. anthony fauci now thinks cases in the united states could peak by the end of january. tom foreman starts us off with a look at how states across the united states are calling out for help. reporter: the federal government is deploying disaster assistance teams and ambulances to new york. new year s eve crowd in times square will be held to about a quarter of the usual. masks and proof of vaccination required. all this as the ci ....
a number that s expected to rise. the storm touched in mississippi, arizona and illinois. in illinois, edwardsville, at least six people were killed when the amazon location were hit. the state with the most widespread damage or at least eight people were killed while working in a candle factory. the people of america there is no lens big enough to show thank you the extent of the damage here in graves county or kentucky. nothing is standing in the direct line of this tornado is still standing. joining us now from kentucky, dasha burns, what can you tell us. reporter: good morning, it s 30 degrees right now so you can imagine what it s like for the people at home right now. getting here from our crew is difficult. it s pitch black and there is so many debris. i would walk around to show you but it s not safe right now of the condition here. every corner you turn there is more devastations and destructions and harrowing stories of residents here. stories of people hi ....
health experts, meanwhile, are warning that omicron variant may already be here in the u.s. there s no way that it s in this many countries across the world, and it has not made it here into our shores. now that we have our eyes open for it, it s probably going to be days until we find it and confirm that there are cases here in the u.s. right now, there are studies to test how well covid vaccines work against this new strain, but with a high number of mutations the doctors say with the little we know about this variant is, quote, very worrying. we shouldn t panic just yet. the most important thing is to study the virus. just because this virus is more contagious, doesn t necessarily mean that it s more dangerous. now the cdc hasn t confirmed any cases of this new strain here in the u.s., but we know the delta variant is still out there and causing a lot of problems. we re covering every angle with our reporters around the globe. we start with cnn s polo sando ....
veer the disease it might cause and also on its impact on vaccine efficacy, but as we ve seen in the last few days these cases are on the rise. we ve just seen in the last few hours the uk and germany both confirming their third cases of the omicron variant alongside a number of other nations, and this is expected to rise. perhaps most troubling we ve seen in the netherlands they had identified 61 confirmed cases of coronavirus on friday from a passengers on a flight from south africa. they have now confirmed that at least 13 of those who tested positive have tested positive for the omicron variant, so there s a real sense of concern and urgency here, but the questions remain, and it will take time to find out more about this variant. we ve heard from the european commission president that we re now in a race against time. take a listen. we re now in a race against time. because we know not a lot about this variant, but it is a variant of concern, and the scientists a ....