Studies Show Omicron Has 80% Lower Risk of Hospitalization

WND ^ | 12/23/2021 | Art Moore

[SeekAndFind]

South Africans who contract the omicron COVID-19 variant in the current fourth wave of infections are 80% less likely to be hospitalized compared with other strains, according to a pre-print study released Tuesday.

A separate study released Wednesday by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland found the omicron hospitalization risk was two-thirds below delta.

Meanwhile, Michael Dowling, the president and CEO of Northwell Health in the New York City area, told CNN on Wednesday morning his hospital system is doing well, even as COVID cases increase, and “there is no crisis.”

His network of 22 hospitals is at less than 10% capacity, with 460 patients. At this time last year, there were 1,000 patients, and during the first COVID wave, in the spring of 2020, there were 3,500.

“We do expect an increase now over the holidays, but it is all manageable, we will be able to deal with this,” Dowling said. “And I think it’s time for people to be a little bit calm, a little bit more rational.”

Significantly, the omicron wave in South Africa, which was first to detect the variant Nov. 25, may already have peaked.

After a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide last Thursday, only 15,424 cases were reported Tuesday.

“The drop in new cases nationally combined with the sustained drop in new cases seen here in Gauteng province, which for weeks has been the center of this wave, indicates that we are past the peak,” Marta Nunes, senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Department of the University of Witwatersrand, told the Associated Press.

The new South Africa study, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, found that once admitted to the hospital, the risk of severe disease is the same as other variants, Bloomberg News reported.

[jimwatx]

From what I understand the Omicron variant is less dependent on the ACE2 receptors as a means of infecting cells and uses other receptors, which means it’s less likely to infect the lungs. So it appears less deadly, but there’s some concern that it could be more damaging to the immune system than the earlier variants in the long term. We need to see further studies before we can draw any conclusions about its long term effects.

[BeauBo]

All indications seem to be that Omicron is significantly milder. Hospitalizations (in the USA) had been slowly growing from Delta, but have leveled off in December, as Omicron began to displace Delta.

Our (US) daily new case numbers are shooting up again this week. December 20th saw 288K new cases reported, second only to 294K on January 8th, as the highest daily tally of the pandemic. Looks like we will go to much higher new peak daily case counts, during this wave. The 7 day average looks to be up over 60% this week. (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases )

Omicron is the dominant strain in the USA, and continuing to grow rapidly over Delta, as it is now in most of the World.

The second week in January is projected to be the US peak, give or take a bit.

[conservativeimage]

Let's see, what's 80% hospitalization of 99.98% survivable?

[faucetman]

Then why is there a mask mandate in my state? (NY) /s