Death rates in South Africa caused by the wave of the Omicron COVID variant were only a quarter of those seen during previous outbreaks of the coronavirus. The ultra-infectious variant could “enter an endemic phase,” scientists say. The researchers also found that the number of Omicron patients in intensive care units fell by three quarters.
Real-world data show that South Africa’s Omicron-driven coronavirus death rates are just a quarter of those seen during previous COVID-19 outbreaks.
According to the Daily Mail, researchers studied data from 450 patients hospitalized in the South African metropolitan area of Tswane after an extremely contagious variant of the coronavirus spread in South Africa. Their survival rates were then compared with nearly 4,000 patients previously hospitalized during the pandemic.
The city district of Tswane is located in the South African province of Gauteng, the first region to fall victim to Omicron.
It turned out that only 4.5 percent of patients hospitalized here with COVID in the last month died from the coronavirus. For comparison, earlier during the pandemic, this figure was about 21.3 percent.
The results, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, also showed that the number of Omicron hospitalizations in intensive care units was a quarter of the previous waves, and the average length of hospital stay was halved.
Scientists participating in the study said it shows “a separation of cases, hospitalizations and deaths compared to previous waves.” The team argues that Omicron could be the “harbinger of the end” of the pandemic’s darkest days and could usher in the endemic phase of the virus.
However, the patients in the latter study were much younger, which could skew the results. But scientists from the South African National Institute for Infectious Diseases (NICD) and the University of Pretoria are not the first to prove the virus is milder. Other real-world studies from the UK and South Africa have already reported that patients who contract this strain are 80 percent less likely to be hospitalized.
But the new study marks the first major study of deaths from Omicron virus infections. Online also showed that only 1% of people were transferred to intensive care, compared with 4.3% in earlier periods of the pandemic. And patients during the Omicron wave were discharged from hospitals on average in four days, up from nearly nine days at the start of the pandemic.
Separately, the same experts examined the medical records of 98 patients who were in the hospital at the height of hospitalization.
Hospital admissions in Tswan “peaked and fell rapidly” within 33 days, and only half of the hospital beds were occupied at one time. During the Delta wave, almost all hospital beds were occupied at their peak.
Only one third of COVID patients were hospitalized due to the virus, while the rest were admitted to hospitals for accidental reasons. The researchers said this level of “accidental COVID” has not been seen anywhere else in South Africa and “likely reflects the high rate of asymptomatic disease in the community with Omicron infection and” high levels of prior infection and vaccination coverage. “
According to the team, about two-thirds of the residents of the Tswane urban district have been vaccinated or infected.
Higher rates of accidental hospitalization with Omicron may also be due to the stress inherently less severe, but “more research is needed to confirm this theory,” the scientists say. Similar patient and mortality data may appear in South Africa, but “may differ” in countries where vaccination rates and previous infections are lower, they said.
The study says Omicron completely supplanted Delta in three weeks, but the number of cases and hospitalizations peaked within five weeks. The researchers say there are clear signs that both infections and hospital admissions in South Africa “will continue to decline over the next few weeks.”
This comes after South Africa’s COVID cases continue to decline as the Omicron wave seems to be fading away on its own. The country, which was one of the first victims in the world to fall victim to the Omicron, peaked seven days before December 17, with an average of 23,437 reported cases. But by Monday, the number had dropped 38 percent to 14,390 cases.
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