More than three million people in the United States have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since August.
Delta remains the dominant variant of COVID-19 in the United States, fueling surges in hospitalizations, and officials are worried Omicron could be even more transmissible.
COVID-19 hospitalizations started trending downward in September after a summer surge in cases caused by Delta, but they're once again ticking up, indicating the winter surge has arrived. Governors across the U.S. have activated National Guard units to help supplement health care staff and officials are urging people to get vaccinated and their booster because waning immunity could make them more susceptible to both Delta and Omicron.
Delta accounts for about 99 percent of global cases and is so transmissible that it hindered other variants' abilities to spread. Three variants of interest—Eta, Iota and Kappa—were dropped from the World Health Organization list of variants of concern because they failed to take hold as Delta spread so rapidly., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , said it's"clearly highly transmissible.
The Delta variant continues to be the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States and is fueling ICU admissions. Above, a nurse enters a COVID-19 patient's room inside the ICU at Adventist Health in Sonora, California, on August 27, 2021.Omicron overtaking Delta as the dominant strain could potentially reduce hospitalizations if it only causes mild disease.
A highly transmissible variant could still cause problems, though, and Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead at the WHO, noted that even if it generally causes mild disease, there will be people who get seriously ill and have to be hospitalized. She added that increased hospitalizations can lead to increased deaths and it'll only add to the strain hospitals are experiencing with Delta.
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