U.S. travel nurses paid higher than doctors amid Omicron spread

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U.S. travel nurses now earn higher salaries even than doctors as the spread of Omicron drives up demand, a Singaporean newspaper has reported.

The highly contagious variant has overwhelmed the U.S. healthcare system, forcing many tiring nurses to quit their jobs and pushing up the demand for travel nurses, Chinese-language paper Lianhe Zaobao reported.

Some of these travel nurses, who aren't attached to a single hospital and work on short-term contracts, could get payment as much as 8,000 U.S. dollars per week, even higher than some surgeons, according to the report.

Analysts said that payment of travel nurses has witnessed a 35-percent increase in 2020, and would record a predicted rise of 40 percent in 2021.

Some hospitals are reportedly pushed to offer short-term contracts of four to six weeks to these nurses due to the lack of staff, while some nurses begin to fulfill their dreams of traveling around the United States by hopping from one hospital to another.