The number of hospital patients with Covid-19 continues to fall in the U.S., adding to signs that the Omicron wave of the pandemic is ebbing, even though deaths from the virus are on the rise.

The seven-day average of hospital patients with a confirmed or suspected coronavirus infection fell to 140,450 on Monday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That marks the 11th consecutive daily drop.

The...

The number of hospital patients with Covid-19 continues to fall in the U.S., adding to signs that the Omicron wave of the pandemic is ebbing, even though deaths from the virus are on the rise.

The seven-day average of hospital patients with a confirmed or suspected coronavirus infection fell to 140,450 on Monday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That marks the 11th consecutive daily drop.

The rolling seven-day average of daily deaths with Covid-19, a lagging indicator of the pace of the pandemic, continued to rise, reaching 2,439 on Monday, the highest level since mid-February last year, according to Johns Hopkins University. Since the start of the pandemic, close to one million people have died in the U.S. from Covid-19, according to estimates by federal authorities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday published a study adding to the evidence that people who are vaccinated and boosted fare better than those who are unvaccinated. Researchers found that as of early January, during the Omicron wave, people in Los Angeles County who were unvaccinated were 3.6 times more likely to get infected and 23 times more likely to be hospitalized than people who had been both vaccinated and boosted. Compared with those who were vaccinated but not yet boosted, unvaccinated people were twice as likely to get infected and 5.3 times more likely to need hospitalization.

“Being up-to-date with Covid-19 vaccinations is a critical component of reducing the strain on healthcare facilities,” the CDC researchers wrote.

The seven-day average of daily recorded infections has fallen continuously for the past seven days, reaching 451,103 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University, a level last seen in early January as cases were rising steeply. Experts expect the falling number of infections from a historically high level will eventually result in a falling number of deaths from the disease.

Around the world, many countries have relaxed Covid-19 restrictions—even in some regions where infections continue to rise—because the Omicron variant is less lethal in vaccinated populations.

In Europe, milder restrictions compared with the early months of the pandemic have allowed many businesses to limit the economic impact of the current wave. Still, economic growth slowed sharply in Europe at the end of last year and business and consumer sentiment was down in January.

A Covid-19 testing center in Germany, which was hit by Omicron later than several neighboring countries.

Photo: thomas kienzle/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In France, the Omicron wave appears to have peaked despite high infection numbers. The seven-day average of new cases continued to decline, down 12% at 334,260, on Monday. The seven-day average of new hospital admissions was 1% lower at 2,733 patients on Monday.

Many hospitals are operating close to or at capacity. The union for critical care physicians conducted a survey in January among 97 doctors that showed nearly 40% of doctors had to turn away on average eight patients that should have been admitted in an intensive care unit over the previous eight days. These patients didn’t all have Covid-19.

In Germany, which was hit by Omicron later than several neighboring countries, the rolling average of new cases continued to grow, even as it seems to have plateaued in some hard-hit parts of the country. The seven-day incidence of Covid-19 infections reached 1,206.2 on Monday, according to the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s center for disease control.

Hospitals in the U.S. are struggling to staff medical facilities as a wave of Covid-19 cases sidelines healthcare workers. Some hospital administrators are being forced to turn to last-resort measures to ensure quality of care. Photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

The number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care, which had been falling continuously since early December, has inched up slightly over the past three days and stood at 27.41 per million inhabitants on Monday, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data. The country doesn’t compile data for Covid-19 patients not in intensive care.

Germany has suffered more from the Omicron wave economically than most of its neighbors because of the economy’s focus on manufacturing and exports. Authorities have suggested they are unlikely to start relaxing current restrictions for at least the next four weeks.

The U.K. recalibrated its daily case numbers to include reinfections for the first time. The data show that, during the peak of the Omicron wave in early January, nearly 11% of identified cases were reinfections. That compares with around 1.5% at the end of November, adding to evidence that Omicron is more effective at evading people’s immune defenses.

The data didn’t distinguish between reinfections in unvaccinated versus vaccinated people. And although the revision pushed overall case numbers up, it didn’t change the overall shape of the Omicron wave in the U.K., where cases appear to be plateauing at a high level after an initial sharp fall from the peak in early January.

The Canadian province of Quebec abandoned plans Tuesday to tax the unvaccinated, which it said was an effort to encourage all citizens to get their Covid-19 shots. Quebec Premier François Legault said he worried the proposed tax would further divide the province’s citizens. “My role as a premier is to make sure that Quebecers are safe, but it’s also to make sure there’s a certain social peace, social cohesion,” said Mr. Legault, who faces re-election later this year. Quebec has emerged as Canada’s hot spot during the recent Omicron-fueled wave of infections.

Separately, researchers are closely following the new variant of Omicron, dubbed BA.2, which has been detected in dozens of countries, including the U.S.

Studies from the U.K. and Denmark both suggest that BA.2 is more transmissible than the original Omicron variant, known as BA.1. The Danish study found that a household contact of someone infected with BA.2 had a 39% chance of catching the virus, versus 29% for someone who shared a home with a BA.1 case. In the U.K., the rate of infection of a household contact was 13.4% for BA.2 versus 10.3% for BA.1.

The Danish study also found that vaccination seemed to affect BA.2 transmission. A vaccinated person infected with BA.2 was less likely to transmit the virus to a household member than one infected with BA.1, but the opposite was true if the infected person was unvaccinated.

The two strains appear to be similar in their ability to infect vaccinated people. An analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency, published last week, found that two doses of vaccine given more than six months earlier were 13% effective at preventing symptomatic disease with BA.2, versus 9% with BA.1. A booster shot increased vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with BA.2 to 70%, versus 63% for BA.1.

—Sarah Toy contributed to this article.

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com, Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com and Denise Roland at Denise.Roland@wsj.com