(CNN)The Omicron variant of coronavirus is going to make the start of 2022 difficult, experts say, as new infections surge, healthcare resources are strained and government agencies adapt to face changing conditions.
"January is going to be a really, really hard month and people should just brace themselves for a month where lots of people are going to get infected," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told CNN's Michael Smerconish Monday.
Omicron is spreading rapidly and case numbers are already on the rise. The seven-day average of new daily cases was 237,061 as of Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That's up from an average of 86,203 new daily cases at the beginning of the month.
"I think we're going to see half a million cases a day -- easy -- sometime over the next week to 10 days," CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN Sunday.
Jha said most people who are vaccinated and boosted won't get severe illness, but that won't be true for the unvaccinated.
"A lot of people who have not gotten a vaccine are going to end up getting pretty sick, and it's going to be pretty disruptive," Jha said. "My hope is, as we get into February and certainly by the time we get into March, infection numbers will come way down, and it'll also start getting spring and the weather will start getting better and that will also help."
Jha said people can protect themselves by getting vaccinated or boosted and taking precautions in public.
"I would urge people to wear a higher quality mask any time they're in a place with lots of people and they're going to be indoors for any extended period of time," Jha said. A surgical mask would be fine for a quick grocery store trip in an empty store, but for other events a good fitting N95 or KF94 mask provides better protection, he said.
Looking ahead to New Year's Eve Friday, small gatherings of fully vaccinated people will be safe, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. But he advised people to avoid large parties where they don't know the vaccination status of all guests.
"When you are talking about a New Year's Eve party where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you do not know the status of the vaccination, I would recommend strongly: Stay away from that this year," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"There will be other years to do that. But not this year."
People wait in line for COVID-19 tests at a mobile testing site in Times Square on December 27, 2021 in New York.
Covid-19 cases among children has hospitals 'waiting on the edge'
Holiday gatherings, like those over Christmas and New Year's, have some health care workers worried about the impact on children in the coming weeks, especially those who are too young to be vaccinated.
"It's going to be a very interesting couple of weeks. We've just had all of these kids mixing together with everybody else during Christmas. We have one more holiday to get through with New Year's, and then we'll be sending everybody back to school," Dr. Claudia Hoyen, the director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Ohio, said. "Everybody is kind of waiting on the edge, wondering what we'll end up seeing."
Hoyen's comment comes as pediatric Covid-19 hospitalizations are nearing the record high set in September.
Pediatric hospitalizations in New York City increased five-fold over a three-week period. In Chicago, hospitalizations at one children's hospital have quadrupled. At Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, close to half the Covid-19 tests are coming back positive.
At Hoyan's hospital in Cleveland, half of all symptomatic tests are coming back positive for Covid-19. She believes about 75% of those cases are due to the Omicron variant, but Hoyen said Northeastern Ohio is a little behind other parts of the county and is still finishing up a large surge in pediatric cases from the Delta variant that started about a month ago.
"If it is less severe with Omicron, that would be great," Hoyen said. "But again, the sheer numbers of kids that might become ill, could still really be problematic for us."
"It's almost like you can see the train coming down the track and you're just hoping it doesn't go off the rails," Hoyen added.
While the Delta variant infected more children than previous variants, Omicron is looking even worse, Dr. Stanley Spinner, who is chief medical officer and vice president at Texas Children's Pediatrics & Urgent Care in Houston, said.
"What's concerning on the (pediatric) side is that, unlike the adults -- where they're reporting for the number of adults getting infected relatively low numbers getting hospitalized -- what we're really seeing, we think, is an increasing number of kids being hospitalized," Spinner said.
Children are an easy target for the virus, Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford, told CNN
"It's affecting larger communities and it's certainly affecting children in a way that we hadn't seen before. And that's new compared to last year," he said.
CDC updates isolation guidelines
Days after updating its guidance on isolation time for health care workers who test positive for Covid-19, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also updated its guidance for the general population.
The CDC shortened the recommended time for isolation from 10 days for people with Covid-19 to five days, if asymptomatic, followed by five days of wearing a mask when around others.
"The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after," the CDC said in a statement announcing the updated guidelines.
"The CDC's new recommendations will permit us to cope with all of this disturbance and to trim it down to allow people to come back to work earlier and safely at very low risk," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN's Poppy Harlow. "That will help us in the New Year begin to get our gears back into operation and to function better."
The CDC also updated its recommended quarantine period for those exposed to Covid-19.
For those who are unvaccinated, have not had a second mRNA dose in more than six months or have not had a booster shot, the CDC recommends quarantining for five days followed by strict mask use for an additional five days.
People who have received their booster shot do not need to quarantine if they are exposed to Covid-19, but they should wear a mask for 10 days after exposure, the statement read.
Fauci said Monday the changes the CDC made to its isolation guidelines for Covid-19 are a good idea.
"I think that was a very prudent and good choice on the part of the CDC, which we spent a considerable amount of time discussing, namely getting people back in half the time than they would have been out so that they can do it back to the workplace, doing things that are important to keep society running smoothly," Fauci told CNN's Jim Acosta.
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January will be 'a really, really hard month' as Omicron variant fuels new infections, expert says - CNN
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