The highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave. Deaths are likely to keep rising for days or even weeks. The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November. It reached 2,267 on Thursday. That surpasses a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant. Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. Andrew Noymer is a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. He says omicron will push the U.S. over a million deaths.