[ANALYSIS] In New York, Omicron revives dark memories of a nightmarish 2020
A man undergoes a rapid Covid-19 test at a medical van in New York.NEW YORK - With restaurants in Brooklyn closing in rapid succession and lines at Covid-19 test centres swelling by the day, fears are growing in New York of a return to the nightmare of 2020, when the city was the global epicentre of the pandemic.
The arrival of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in New York had people lining up for testing on December 17, 2021"It feels very reminiscent of March 2020," said Spencer Reiter, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident who works in finance. The only sound heard in Manhattan's broad avenues seemed to be the stress-inducing wail of ambulance sirens, while hospitals operated beyond capacity and morgues were forced to bring in refrigerated trucks to handle the huge influx of Covid victims.
The US already leads the world in the grimmest of statistics. On Tuesday it surpassed 800,000 Covid deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University."Omicron happened," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said recently on CNN.