RE:RE:Quadruple witching prophetoffacts wrote: Omicron is very contagous. Four countries with the highest documented Omicron rates are setting case records as in the graph below. It is so fast it should be over relatively fast. Latest from Imperial College:
Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses
by Emily Head, Dr Sabine L. van Elsland
The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection. However, hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.
Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London said: “This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.”
The evidence does not support the claim that Omicron causes more deaths or hospitalizations than Delta.
If we look at the UK as of Dec 16 there are 7,549 in hospitals and 891 in ICU. If we go back to Dec 1 we had 7,539 in hospitals and 917 patients. We know hospitalizations and deaths may lag and increase further in days and weeks ahead but it hasn’t happened yet. At around the peak on Jan 21 the UK had 38,416 hospitals and 3,899 in ICU which is significantly higher than current case counts.
The 7-day rolling average number of deaths in South Africa remain stable and relatively low at 31 deaths per day.