A string of new studies has confirmed the silver lining of the Omicron variant: Even as case numbers soar to records, the numbers of severe cases and hospitalisations have not. The data, some scientists say, signal a new, less worrying chapter of the pandemic. The development comes as more than 1 million people in the US were diagnosed with Covid-19 on Monday as a tsunami of Omicron swamps every aspect of daily American life.

Monday’s number is almost double the previous record of about 590,000 set just four days ago in the US, which itself was a doubling from the prior week.

But scientists are hopeful. “We’re now in a totally different phase,” said Monica Gandhi, an immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “The virus is always going to be with us, but my hope is this variant causes so much immunity that it will quell the pandemic.”

Data from the past week suggest that a combination of widespread immunity and numerous mutations have resulted in a virus that causes far less severe disease than previous iterations.

One study out of South Africa found that patients admitted to the hospital there during the Omicron-dominated fourth wave of the virus were 73 per cent less likely to have severe disease than patients admitted during the delta-dominated third wave.

Several factors appear to have made the Omicron variant less virulent than previous waves of Covid-19. One factor is the virus’ ability to infect the lungs. Five separate studies in the past week suggested that the variant does not infect the lungs as easily as previous variants.

However, Britain on Tuesday faced warnings of an impending hospital crisis due to staff shortages caused by a wave of Omicron infections, as the country returned to work after Christmas.

Central China saw more than one million people in Yuzhou city confined to their homes on Tuesday after three asymptomatic cases were recorded in the country’s latest mass lockdown.

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