A local doctor says he's seeing more COVID cases than ever in his hospital, but he's expecting Omicron to peak at the end of the month.

Dr. Daniel Gottschall is the vice president of medical affairs for Hartford HealthCare at St. Vincent's Medical Center. He says there are currently 80 patients there that tested positive for COVID.

He says typically St. Vincent's sees about 60,000-70,000 patients a year - about 200 a day.

"Over the last two weeks, we've been averaging more like 250 patients a day," said Gottschall.

Gottschall says Omicron is the reason for the uptick in cases.

"All we know is across the country over the last week, it looks like about 95% of the cases are, in fact, Omicron, which is what the CDC is telling us," said Gottschall.

He says colleges and universities that have been modeling Omicron hope we may be approaching the worst of it.

"All of them seem to say about the same thing, that this is probably going to peak at the end of January. They're using the words sharp and fast to quote some of the studies," said Gottschall.

Pfizer just announced it has a new vaccine for Omicron that is coming out in March, but Gottschall agrees with Dr. Anthony Fauci that we may not need it.

"Right now, I would really concentrate all of my efforts on letting people know how important the vaccines are that we have, all three of the vaccines we already have that they work and they work really well," said Gottschall.

Gottschall says he's heard of people getting COVID twice but not three times.

He stressed the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted to prevent severe COVID cases.