CDC significantly reduces estimate of omicron prevalence in US

The CDC significantly reduced its estimate for how prevalent the omicron variant of COVID-19 is in the United States on Tuesday, saying that the new variant was only responsible for 22.5% of new cases in the week that ended Dec. 18, not the alarming 73.2% that it had originally estimated last week. 

For the week ending Dec. 25, the agency says omicron accounted for 58.6% of all new cases.

Jasmine Reed, a spokesperson for the CDC, noted that there was "a wide predictive interval posted in last week’s chart," and the downward...