COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are continuing to drop in the United States, U.S. health officials said Wednesday, though deaths attributed to the disease have been rising. The seven-day daily average of cases is around 692,400 cases, down about 6 percent from the previous week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters in a virtual briefing. The seven-day daily average of COVID-19 hospital admissions also dropped over the past week by about 8 percent, hitting around 19,800 per day, according to Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the same time, the seven-day daily average of COVID-19 deaths rose about 21 percent over the previous week, coming in around 2,200 per day. According to CDC data, the Omicron-fueled wave appears to have peaked earlier in mid-January, with cases steadily dropping since then. Omicron is a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19. Some 1.3 million …