Research confirms Omicron is less lethal

by time news

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said the UC Berkeley study confirmed scientists’ initial assumptions: the Omicron variant had a 91% lower lethality compared to the previous most common Delta strain.

The study included 52,297 patients with the Omicron variant and 16,982 patients with the Delta. They were observed from November 30, 2021 to January 1, 2022. The work was done with the cooperation and funding of the CDC, Walensky said.

According to the publication, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the risk of hospitalization of patients with Omicron is reduced by 53%, and the need for treatment in intensive care units by 74%. Also, none of the patients with this strain required mechanical ventilation.

“In addition, the length of stay in the hospital for patients with Omicron was on average about 3 days, while a patient infected with the Delta variant spends about five days in the hospital,” Walensky said.

Based on the data studied, the scientists made an unambiguous conclusion: infection with the Omicron variant is associated with a significantly reduced risk of severe COVID-19 disease.

On January 14, scientists from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of South Africa reported similar findings. The researchers concluded that the risks of severe hospitalization and / or death from Omicron are reduced by 25% compared to Delta. At the same time, preliminary results from two clinical trials in South Africa show that this strain has a much higher “asymptomatic carrier” rate than earlier variants, which may explain why it has spread so quickly around the world.

In one study, 31% of volunteers were infected with Omicron and had no symptoms (for comparison, in the same trials by South African scientists, only 2.4% of patients were asymptomatic carriers of Delta). And, interestingly, the absence of symptoms was recorded in both vaccinated and unvaccinated.

In other words, this is both good and bad news. On the one hand, we have many people who are carriers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus without knowing it. Much like the herpes virus, the World Health Organization estimates that in 2016, about 3.7 billion people under the age of 50, or 67% of the world’s population, are infected with this virus, and due to the lack of symptoms, many of the carriers they are unaware of it. But at the same time, the carrier can potentially infect another person with the coronavirus, on whose body the virus will have a devastating effect.

On the other hand, such a massive asymptomatic carriage may mean that more people have had the infection and developed immunity after the disease. In fact, that is why more and more virologists are talking about Omicron as a “gift” that brings us closer to herd immunity without the need for constant revaccination.

At the same time, CDC director Rochelle Walensky urged not to relax: “Although we see early evidence that Omicron is less serious than Delta, and that those infected are less likely to need hospitalization, it is important to note that Omicron is still much more contagious than Delta. This has resulted in an unprecedented daily rise in cases and a strain on our healthcare system.”

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