Healthcare facilities are rapidly becoming overwhelmed with an influx of new patients who have contracted the highly contagious COVID variant.
If you’re confused by the ever-changing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations regarding the Omicron variant of COVID-19, you’re not alone. Even healthcare workers are. Omicron behaves very differently from all the previous Greek-alphabet named variants. It’s the new king of the hill. Ninety-five percent of new COVID-19 infections in the U.S. are currently being caused by it.
What do we know about Omicron?
Controlling exploding Omicron cases here has been hampered by testing challenges. Good luck scheduling a PCR test. And even if you can get one, getting the results after 72+ hours is worthless. This variant has a shorter incubation period than its predecessors, as short as 1-2 days, so the best tests, though imperfect, are rapid antigen tests, with results in 15-30 minutes. Getting home antigen test kits is also a challenge. They seem to disappear off drugstore shelves as soon as they are stocked.
Difficulty in getting tested is harming everybody. Otherwise-well patients are showing up in ERs to get tested. That’s a terrible idea. Waiting in a crowded ER increases your risk of catching this virus, while overwhelming already burnt-out doctors and nurses who are struggling to take care of sick patients. Healthcare facilities are being stretched beyond their limits, resulting in the rationing of care, in some places.
But it’s not all gloom and doom. Omicron isn’t Delta. Omicron results in milder disease than previous variants…provided that you are fully vaccinated. Unless you have a significantly compromised immune system, hospitalizations and deaths from Omicron are highly unlikely if you are vaccinated and boosted. These vaccines work, despite some degree of vaccine evasion.
Unless you live like a hermit, it will be difficult to avoid catching Omicron over the next few months. It’s that contagious. So, this is what I think we should do in the short run:
As for the long run, Omicron won’t be the last variant. COVID-19 will likely never disappear. It will become endemic, just like the flu, with seasonal outbreaks. Booster shots and periodic public health recommendations to wear face masks are unlikely to go away anytime soon.
We can learn to live with this new normal.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece on RADV audits, written by Frank Cohen, was published on RACmonitor on Aug. 25, 2025. It’s being republished on ICD10monitor because
With so much focus within the federal government on abuse, fraud, and waste, I thought it might be helpful to review a couple of federal
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