US COVID: Cases fall slightly to 643,660 new infections in a single day and ...

While Omicron drives record COVID-19 case increases in the U.S., deaths have stayed relatively low so far - with about 1,300 Americans dying each day in the last week, compared to 2,600 deaths per day at this point in 2021.

The variant's inherently milder qualities, combined with high levels of immunity from vaccination and prior infections, may mean that a low percentage of people infected in the Omicron surge will face severe symptoms.

The U.S. could follow the U.K., where the current Covid mortality rate is 21 times lower than it was during the country's second wave and experts are saying Omicron 'should be welcomed.'

Following a large wave of cases in the U.S., some experts say that the variant could lead to even higher levels of population immunity - meaning that future surges will be even less severe.

Experts call the phenomenon of the rising case rate compared to a low death rate 'decoupling': hospitalizations and deaths used to increase at the same rate as cases during surges, but now they increase at lower rates.

In the U.S., decoupling may be attributed to both Omicron's inherent biology and high levels of immunity in the population.

A growing number of studies are showing that Omicron is less likely to cause severe symptoms than past coronavirus strains.

Unlike other variants, Omicron can rapidly replicate in the upper airways - but has limited capacity to wreak havoc in the lungs, where the worst respiratory symptoms take place.

At the same time, the U.S. has high levels of immunity from vaccinations and past infections.

More than 70 percent of Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, while about one-third have been infected at some point, computational biologist Trevor Bedford recently told STAT News.

'Factored together, that's 80-odd percent [of people with some immunity,' Bedford said.

While the vaccines are less effective at protecting against Omicron infections than they were at preventing infection from past strains, vaccine protection against severe disease remains strong.

Experts are observing a similar decoupling pattern in the U.K., which is a couple of weeks ahead of the U.S. in its Omicron wave.

Dr David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline the strain's emergence could be the best thing to have happened for the pandemic, echoing comments made by health experts in Denmark earlier this week.

He said: 'With the spread of Omicron over the past three weeks, recorded cases have gone from around 50,000 per day to around 200,000.'

'This has not fed through into an increased death rate - and a rise would have been expected by now, if it was going to happen.

MailOnline analysis found that just 0.15 percent of cases in the U.K. led to a death towards the end of December, compared to three percent during the country's large second wave last winter.

'The divergence between case and death rates agrees perfectly with Omicron being highly transmissible but less lethal than earlier variants - exactly as asserted by doctors in South Africa who discovered it,' Livermore said.

'It tallies also with studies from Hong Kong and Cambridge showing that Omicron is less able to infect lung cells and more likely to stay in the upper airways, where it does less serious harm,' he went on.'

'In all these respects, Omicron is far preferable to the more dangerous variants that proceeded it and its take over should be welcomed.'