Surging cases of the coronavirus in Louisiana are being driven by the Omicron strain, but there is still a lot to learn about how this variant will affect people.
The Omicron variant is making people sick enough to go to the hospital. The Louisiana Department of Health Wednesday reports hospitalizations jumped 145, to 659.
But even that does not paint the complete picture of Omicron's severity, says Tulane epidemiologist Susan Hassig.
"It's really, how sick are they when they're in the hospital? And that's what we don't quite have a full grasp of."
Dr. Hassig says Omicron so far is sending a smaller percentage of its patients into the ICU compared to Delta.
"The ICU beds have stayed below ten percent of the hospitalizations so far," said Hassig. "In the Delta surge, it was between ten and fifteen percent."
But even if the percentage of patients with sever symptoms is fewer, Omicron could still overwhelm that state's health care system if it infects a larger number of people.
