The paradox of Omicron, now responsible for an estimated 98.3% of all US coronavirus cases, is that while it seems more likely to result in significantly milder outcomes than Delta and previous variants, the health system is as stressed as it’s ever been.
Public health officials are warning that Omicron is threatening to overwhelm the medical infrastructure with sheer numbers, and hospitals are filled with seriously ill patients.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Dean Blumberg, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the University of California, Davis.
Here’s what we know about why this is happening:
Omicron is more contagious
The variant appears to be roughly two to five times more transmissible than Delta, which previously dominated US cases.
“This is the second-most contagious disease in the world now, second to measles,” said Sara Murray, the director of the health informatics data science and innovation team and an associate professor of clinical and hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
“While we are seeing early evidence that Omicron is less severe than Delta and that those infected are less likely to require hospitalization, it’s important to note that Omicron continues to be much more transmissible,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday.
This means that even though a smaller percentage of patients infected with Omicron require hospitalization, the total number of COVID cases is so high that hospitals are seeing more of those patients than at any point in the pandemic.
COVID-19 cases have reached record levels in the US, averaging around 1.4 million new reported cases a day, itself an undercount. Daily, an average of 19,800 people nationwide are now admitted to hospitals with COVID, according to the CDC, a 33% increase over the past week. Almost a third of intensive care unit beds nationwide are now filled with COVID patients, meaning roughly 1 out of every 2.5 people in an ICU ward in the country has the virus
