Those affected by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus are 40% to 45% less likely to need to be hospitalized overnight compared to carriers of the Delta variant and 15% to 20% less likely to need to go to the hospital emergency room for examination or monitoring.
The findings come from an analysis of hospitalizations and vaccination data of all COVID-confirmed molecular test cases in England from 1 to 14 December by the team of Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London.
The study found that even an unvaccinated person who had never been infected with coronavirus before and therefore had zero immunity was 11% less likely to be hospitalized if infected with Omicron than with Delta.
For someone who has been infected in the past and therefore has antibodies to the virus, the risk of hospitalization due to a new Omicron infection is reduced by 69% compared to Delta.
The risk of hospitalization for those vaccinated with two doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna vaccines infected with Omicron is "significantly reduced" compared with those not vaccinated with Delta, even if the two doses protect against simple infection from the Micron is negligible.
The so-called "lockdown professor" due to his pessimistic predictions, who just last week warned of the possibility of 5.000 deaths a day in the UK due to Omicron, commented after the new findings that the new wave of the pandemic "will not look like not at all with what we saw last year, that is, with the intensive care units overflowing with patients ".
He noted that in London we see a lot of hospitalizations, but not long-term and probably not very serious cases. He attributed this not so much to the properties of Omicron, which need further research, but to the increased immunity of the population.
He stressed, however, that if the number of patients is very large, then there will be a great challenge for the health system. As he said, if Omicron infections are 40% more common than Delta infections, then the advantage that milder infections give the NHS could be lost.
Imperial College colleague Professor Azra Ghani said that while the reduced risk of Omicron hospitalization was reassuring, the risk of infection remained "extremely high". The best protection, he added, against both simple infection and hospitalization is provided by the booster dose of the vaccine.
At the same time, a study by the University of Strathclyde on data in Scotland estimates that if Omicron were as serious about delta infections as there should be, there should currently be 47 carriers in Scottish hospitals. So far, however, only 15 are being treated.
The researchers roughly estimate that the risk of hospitalization from Omicron is reduced by 2/3 compared to the risk recommended by Delta.
Source: KYPE