Omicron ‘will infect 60% of US with 140million new cases from January to March’

The US will see 140million new coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant from January to March, some health experts estimate (Picture: Getty Images)

The coronavirus Omicron variant will cause 140million new infections, meaning 60% of Americans, from January to March, some health experts predict.

A majority the projected cases from January 1 to March 2 will be asymptomatic, according to researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation who revised their Covid-19 modeling with data on the new variant. They believe that the daily cases will peak at 2.8million on January 28.

‘We are expecting an enormous surge in infections… so, an enormous spread of Omicron,’ the institute’s director Dr Chris Murray told USA Today on Wednesday.

‘Total infections in the US we forecast are going from about 40% of the US having been infected so far, to having in the next two to three months, 60% of the US getting infected with Omicron.’

Health experts predict that new coronavirus infections will peak in late January in the US (Picture: Yuan Tang)

More than 90% of people who contract Omicron may not show symptoms, Murray said. By contrast, meta-analyses have shown that about 40% of cases of previous Covid-19 variants were asymptomatic.

In addition, the researchers predict that only about 400,000 coronavirus cases of their massive projection will be reported because many Americans will not feel sick or get tested.

As a comparison, the country reported just over 250,000 daily cases at the peak of last winter’s Covid-19 surge in January, when vaccines were not yet available.

The researchers are of the same belief as most health experts at this time that Omicron is less likely to cause severe illness and death than previous versions of the coronavirus. The Omicron hospitalization rate is about 90% to 96% lower than that of the Delta variant which spread widely through the US in the summer.

‘In the past, we roughly thought that Covid was 10 times worse than flu and now we have a variant that is probably at least 10 times less severe,’ Murray said. ‘So, Omicron will probably… be less severe than flu but much more transmissible.’ 

The researchers’ models indicate that the world could see roughly 3billion new infections in the next two months, peaking in mid-January with more than 35million daily cases.

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