As with the delta surge, doctors say the patients who are primarily filling up their hospitals and getting the sickest are the unvaccinated.

“If you look at the ones who’re in the ICU or need to be on a ventilator, it’s much more the unvaccinated,” says Dr. Matthew Sims, director of infectious disease research at Beaumont Health in Michigan, where unvaccinated patients account for about two thirds of their hospitalizations…

Omicron even sickens some unvaccinated people who would otherwise not be considered high risk.

“If they’re young or middle-aged and don’t have a lot of underlying medical problems and they’re in the ICU with COVID, I just kind of know they’re going to be unvaccinated patients,” says Bell.