People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Dec 20, 2021. (SETH WENIG, FILE / AP)

Doctors say there is a dangerous trend of people deliberately contracting the highly contagious Omicron variant to "get it over with".

It is "all the rage", Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN.

"It's caught on like wildfire. And it's widespread, coming from all types of people－the vaccinated and boosted and the anti-vaxxers. You'd be crazy to try to get infected with this. It's like playing with dynamite," Robert Murphy, executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, told CNN.

"People are talking about Omicron like it's a bad cold. It is not a bad cold. It's a life-threatening disease."

Offit said it is true that if someone catches Omicron as opposed to Delta, "you're less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to go to the ICU, less likely to be put on a mechanical ventilator and less likely to die－and that's true of all age groups".

'Less severe'

"But that doesn't mean that it can't be a severe illness," he added. "It's just less severe. But you don't have a zero percent chance of dying. You should never want to get infected."

While most people have spent the last two years trying to avoid contracting COVID-19, the  Times reported that some parents are taking their children to "COVID-19 parties" to deliberately infect them so that they will have natural immunity in theory.

In one social media video, a woman purposely tries to get the coronavirus by sharing a glass of orange juice with her COVID-positive daughter.

In another video, a bride-to-be is purposefully attempting to get infected. In the 15-second video, the woman embraced several people and swapped drinks at a nightclub.

The video had 121,000 views on TikTok.

The logic behind the trend, according to various TikTok videos and other posts, is to contract the virus and "speed up the process".

People who have contracted Omicron could also get long-lasting COVID-19. An estimated 100 million people around the world have or have had long COVID-19, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan released in November.

"People don't know if they're going to (be one) of the folks who are able to endure an infection with few long-term consequences," Laolu Fayanju, regional medical director for Oak Street Health in Ohio, told Time magazine. There is no reason to intentionally take that risk, he added.

Catching Omicron on purpose also can stress the healthcare system, Murphy said. The US set a new COVID-19 hospitalization record on Monday, with 140,000 COVID-related patients staying in hospitals.