Poland expects highest infection rate so far in new wave

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s health officials say that the country has entered a new, fifth wave, in the coronavirus pandemic, predicting that it it will peak in mid-February at about 60,000 new infections per day or even more. The deputy health minister, said Tuesday that the highly transmissible omicron variant now accounts for 19% of the samples that have been sequenced nationwide, though 50% are in the Pomerania province along the Baltic coast in the country’s north. If the Health Ministry’s predictions prove correct, the rate of infection in the coming wave would be more than double that of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2021.