CDC ensemble forecast for new daily hospital admissions and weekly deaths through January 21st/22nd respectively. The ensemble case forecasts have not been reliable for the Omicron wave unfortunately so are not being updated at present.
It is a sheer numbers game with Omicron. The variant appears to be milder than Delta, but with so many cases occurring so rapidly the overall number of hospitalizations will be high. Hospitalizations are lagging by ~2 weeks, so we are just entering the first wave of Omicron hospitalizations from the start of the Omicron surge earlier in December. More will follow.
When Omicron hit the US we still were dealing with high levels of Delta hospitalizations nationally. Unlike South Africa we already had a high pre-existing hospital load.
To put this forecast into perspective the Delta wave peaked at about ~12k new daily hospital admissions. We are already nearing that. The January peak of 2021 had about ~17k new daily hospital admissions.
So we may be entering potentially the worst period of the pandemic for hospitalizations nationally. However there is a lot of uncertainty with these forecasts right now. ICU load and deaths should be much lower though due to both population immunity and Omicron's reduced severity.
People need to get vaccinated. We unfortunately just have a lot more vaccine resistance than other countries. And people need to get boosted. Far too few elderly and high risk people are boosted. And please wear masks, preferably N95, KN95s, or medical masks.