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Studies from the United Kingdom and South Africa suggest fewer people are being hospitalized after being infected by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 than prior strains of the virus.
It is still unclear whether the Omicron variant – which can cause breakthrough infections among the vaccinated population – is fundamentally milder or is just appearing milder as people now have more immunity.
The South African study by the National Institute For Communicable Diseases found that among people who tested positive during October and November, suspected Omicron cases were 80 per cent less likely than Delta cases to be admitted to hospital. The Financial Times reports that this was after adjusting for factors including age, underlying health conditions and previous infection. Researchers stressed they did not account for vaccination status in this analysis, and data on prior infections were unreliable.
A second analysis controlling for vaccination status found that once admitted to hospital, Omicron and Delta cases from recent weeks had a similar likelihood of progressing to a serious condition. The analyses included more than 10,000 Omicron cases and more than 200 hospital admissions.
In the UK, Scottish scientists have been tracking coronavirus and tallying the number of people ending up in hospital.
The researcfhers said that if Omicron behaved the same as Delta then they would expect around 47 people to have been admitted to hospital already. At the moment there are only 15. Dr Jim McMenamin, the national Covid-19 incident director at Public Health Scotland, described it as a “qualified good news story”.
The findings by separate research teams raise hopes that there will be fewer cases of severe disease than those caused by other strains of the virus, but the researchers cautioned that Omicron’s high degree of infectiousness could still strain health services.
