In hospitals around the country, doctors are taking notice: This wave of Covid seems different from the last one.

Once again, as they face the highly contagious omicron variant, medical personnel are exhausted and are contracting the virus themselves. And the numbers of patients entering hospitals with the variant are surging to staggering levels, filling up badly needed beds, delaying nonemergency procedures and increasing the risk that vulnerable uninfected patients will catch the virus.

But in omicron hot spots from New York to Florida to Texas, a smaller proportion of those patients are landing in intensive care units or requiring mechanical ventilation, doctors said. And many — roughly 50 to 65 per cent of admissions in some New York hospitals — show up at the hospital for other ailments and then test positive for the virus.

“We are seeing an increase in the number of hospitalisations,” said Dr Rahul Sharma, emergency physician in chief for NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. But the severity of the disease looks different from previous waves, he said. “We’re not sending as many patients to the ICU, we’re not intubating as many patients, and actually, most of our patients that are coming to the emergency department that do test positive are actually being discharged.”

Though it’s still early for firm predictions, the shift in hospital patterns fits with emerging data that omicron may be a variant with inherently milder effects than those that have come before, less prone to infecting the lungs, where it can cause serious disease. But the lower proportion of severe cases is also happening because, compared with previous variants, omicron is infecting more people who have some prior immunity, whether through prior infection or vaccination.

The vast majority of omicron patients in ICUs are unvaccinated or have severely compromised immune systems, doctors said.

Hospitals, facing staff shortages, are under enormous strain. In New York City, hospitalisations have exceeded the peak of last winter’s surge. And governor Larry Hogan of Maryland declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, noting that the state had more hospitalised patients at that time than at any point during the pandemic.

“We’re in truly crushed mode,” said Dr Gabe Kelen, director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s emergency department.

The number of ICU patients is a lagging indicator, likely to rise in the coming weeks, experts said. What’s more, some states are still struggling under the crush of hospitalisations from Delta, a previous version of the virus that may be more virulent.

Still, several reports suggest that omicron is a foe different from the variants that came before.

(New York Times News Service)