If you want to know if death rates and hospitalization will increase when omicron hits your location, look at what happened in South Africa, where the omicron variant started and is now the dominant variant comprising 95% of the cases.
Analysts from the South African Medical Research Council and National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg made the South African Population Immunity and Severe Covid-19 with Omicron Variant released yesterday as a preprint.
The four covid waves in Gauteng, South Africa
The graph below shows the daily case rates, weekly hospitalization rates, weekly excess death rates per 100,000 population, and daily recorded death rates per 1,000,000 population as the x-axis. The y axis represents time.
Different variants dominate each wave. The Wuhan type caused the first, and the Beta, Delta, and Omicron are second, third, and fourth.
- The dashed orange lines represent the daily case rates. The Omicron-dominant fourth wave increased faster than prior waves due to the omicron’s higher transmissibility. Notice that the fourth wave is now beginning to go down.
- The blue line is the weekly hospitalization rate, and it is lower during the current omicron wave than the third wave caused by the Delta variant.
- The black line is the weekly excess deaths, and it remained low in the fourth wave despite the high omicron cases. (total 569 vs. 2650 in the first 31 days). That means the omicron causes less mortality.
- The solid orange line is the daily reported death rates (total 194 vs. 668 in the first 31 days) also remained low.
In summary, the omicron variant in South Africa caused higher numbers of COVID-19 cases, but it is less deadly compared to the other preceding variants like the Delta. The thirty mutations in the spike proteins of the omicron enabled it to evade neutralizing antibodies and allowed it to infect more people.
Despite the higher number of cases, the disease severity is less, as reflected by the lower hospitalization and fewer deaths. Note that the peak of omicron cases passed in a shorter time.
The graph is in the article I wrote about the omicron variant on November 28. Should I be afraid of the omicron variant?
As the COVID pandemic runs thru its course, people get infected and develop immunity either by immunization or natural infection.
Natural infection mediates cellular immunity that is robust and long-lasting. People who recovered from COVID-19 have effective T-cells against the omicron, and Pre-existing T-cells stop COVID-19 before it starts and explain why some never get COVID.
The persistent variants tend to be more infectious but less deadly by natural selection.
However, it is still prudent to remain vigilant and optimize the immune system with adequate vitamin D and other supplements.
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Signs of respiratory infection should be treated with away.
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Reference:
South African Population Immunity and Severe Covid-19 with Omicron Variant.
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