"The fast-spreading Omicron variant has fueled a rise in COVID-19 cases to levels far beyond any recorded in the United States since the start of the pandemic," reported The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

A study, cited in the report, found that for every 10,000 cases of COVID-19 detected outside of a hospital, 110 of those with the Delta variant had symptoms and ended up in the hospital. For those with Omicron, only 16 were hospitalized.

But Omicron variant is estimated to be about three to five times more contagious than Delta. Consequently, the number of people infected is many times greater than during the Delta peak in late summer of 2021. So even though Omicron is less likely to result in severe disease, the sheer scale of infections means the raw number of hospitalizations now exceeds the peak number when Delta was dominant, said the study.

The study conducted by Kaiser Permanente, a California-based hospital and health-insurance company, and funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), examined nearly 70,000 COVID-19 cases in Southern California from Nov 30 to Jan 1. It found rates of hospitalization, admission to intensive-care units, mechanical ventilation and death were all substantially lower in patients infected with Omicron.