Even among unvaccinated cases, the risk of ending up in hospital was 70 per cent lower, and the risk of death 80 per cent lower, if infected with Omicron
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A massive studying involving more than 1.5 million COVID infections in England provides “clear evidence” Omicron is less deadly than Delta, British scientists are reporting — evidence they say bolsters the case for dropping COVID restrictions.
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After adjusting for age and other factors, people with Omicron had a 59 per cent lower risk of being admitted to hospital, and a 69 per cent lower risk of dying, compared to people infected with Delta.
The risk of hospitalization was significantly higher for the unvaccinated. But even among unvaccinated cases, the risk of ending up in hospital was 70 per cent lower, and the risk of death 80 per cent lower, if infected with Omicron compared to unvaccinated people infected with Delta, compelling evidence, the researchers said, that Omicron is intrinsically less severe than Delta.
Vaccines were somewhat less effective at keeping people with breakthrough Omicron infections out of hospital compared to breakthrough Delta cases. But the risk of hospitalization was much higher for the unvaccinated, and the boosted were the most protected: Those vaccinated with three doses were 80 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital or die than the unvaccinated.
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Omicron’s reduced severity “will make the goal of living with COVID-19 in the absence of socially and economically disruptive public health interventions substantially easier to achieve at the current time,” the researchers wrote in The Lancet.
“Interestingly, how much severity is reduced varies by age, with the greatest reduction in severity seen in 50- to 70-year-olds, and a smaller reduction in younger and older age groups,” Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson, one of the authors, said in a statement. In November, when Omicron was beginning its surge, Imperial College researchers said there was no evidence it was less deadly than Delta, and that Omicron’s ability to elude some protection from a previous infection or vaccination could mean the variant posed a “major, imminent threat to public health.”
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That was based on early and limited data at the time. The latest analysis showing a substantial drop in severity “has undoubtedly made it easier for countries to end pandemic restrictions than might otherwise have been the case,” Ferguson said.
Across Canada, provinces are phasing out masking and vaccine mandates. Dancing in bars is now on again in Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick has ditched all distancing rules. As of April 1, vaccinated travellers will no longer need to show a COVID-19 test to enter Canada, the federal government announced Thursday.
There’s no guarantee a future variant won’t be more virulent, Ferguson and his colleagues cautioned. Omicron’s sibling, the BA.2 subvariant now driving record case counts and deaths in some parts of the world, is on its way to becoming dominant across Canada. About half of confirmed new COVID-19 cases in the country are BA.2, Sarah Otto, a professor of evolutionary virology at the University of British Columbia told the Ottawa Citizen’s Elizabeth Payne this week.
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BA.2 is 30 per cent more transmissible, Eric Topol, founder and director of the of the Scripps Research Translational Institute wrote on Twitter, “and more when you add in lack of restrictions and waning immunity.” Its transmissibility is what’s driving resurgences. “Fortunately, it’s not more virulent, and three shots protect well” against hospitalization and death, Topol said.
A separate analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency has found no evidence people with BA.2 are more likely to end up in hospital.
In Ontario, COVID case counts, hospitalizations and ICU admissions have stopped falling. With mask and vaccine mandates lifting, hospital and ICU numbers will likely increase, the province’s COVID-19 science advisory table said in a report released Thursday, though not close to the levels seen in January.
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As of Thursday, 644 people were in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19, and a modelling graph suggests there could be fewer than 900 at a peak in early May — a far cry from the more than 4,000 people in hospital with COVID in January.
It’s likely there are currently between 15,000 and 20,000 new COVID-19 cases each day in the province, the science table wrote, and that as many as four million people have been infected since December.
Ontario is confident it has the capacity to provide care for those who need it. “Ontario has done significantly better than the best-case scenario provided in the last modelling, and we now have the lowest rate of hospitalizations out of all provinces,” said Alexandra Hilkene, press secretary for Health Minister Christine Elliott. The province’s hospitals “can manage any range in these latest projections,” she said.
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In the Lancet study, only adults had significantly reduced risk of ending up in hospital with Omicron compared to Delta cases. Among children under the age of 10, the risk of hospitalization was similar for both variants.
“Does this mean Omicron is severe for kids? Not necessarily,” tweeted epidemiologist Meaghan Kall, one of the authors of the report.
“In young kids, hospitalization doesn’t always equal more severe disease, as the threshold for admission is low,” Kall, of the U.K. Health Security Agency, said. Lab studies have shown Omicron replicates more in the upper airway cells and less in the lungs. Omicron seems to cause more upper respiratory and fever symptoms in kids, “which can trigger precautionary admission,” Kall said.
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The study was based on just over 1.5 million COVID-19 cases, of whom one million were infected with Omicron. The data provide “clear evidence that Omicron is less severe than Delta, as the analysis accounted for immunity from vaccine and prior infection,” Kall said.
A related commentary said that while a person’s individual risk for hospitalization or death is lower for Omicron than for Delta, the “worst SARS-CoV-2 variant on record,” Omicron’s sheer contagiousness, its ability to spread easily and fast, led to record levels of cases globally “that led to record numbers of hospitalizations in some countries, such as the USA.”
National Post, with additional reporting by The Canadian Press
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