Large-Scale Study Finds Omicron Unlikely to Cause Severe Disease

A study that evaluated more than 69,000 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infections in Southern California found that the Omicron variant caused much less severe health outcomes than the Delta variant. The researchers—one from the University of California at Berkeley; two from Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare system through which the patients received treatment; and three from the COVID-19 Response Team at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—looked at 52,297 cases caused by the Omicron variant and 16,982 cases of the Delta variant between November 30, 2021 and January 1, 2022. None of the patients with the Omicron variant required medical intubation while 11 patients with the Delta variant needed ventilators. In addition, the length of stay for those patients requiring hospitalization was 69% shorter for individuals with Omicron compared to those with the Delta variant. The study was published in medRxiv but has yet to go through the peer-review process. Click here to read more.