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Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said that preliminary studies so far indicate that the omicron coronavirus variant is less likely to cause severe disease than delta.
“All indications point to a lesser severity of omicron versus delta,” Fauci said at a press briefing.
He detailed a report out of South Africa showing that those who were hospitalized during the omicron wave compared to previous coronavirus waves were less likely to require intensive care unit admission or supplemental oxygen. He also pointed to a preliminary analysis out of the U.K. that found that the “risk of hospitalization admission alone with omicron was 40% of that for delta.”
He said it is not clear how much of the lowered severity is due to pre-existing immunity versus omicron’s intrinsically lower virulence. His comments align with previously published data.
Cartoons on the Coronavirus
But the increased transmissibility of omicron will likely lead to more cases and, therefore, more hospitalizations and deaths. Fauci previously said that an upcoming surge of the omicron variant is “inevitable” and reported coronavirus infections in the U.S. are already breaking records.
“Omicron resulting in an extremely high volume of cases may override some of the impact of the lower disease severity,” Fauci said, adding that “we should not become complacent.”
It’s a similar warning to one previously issued by the World Health Organization.
“Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing earlier this month. “We’re concerned that people are dismissing omicron as mild. Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril.”
Fauci also touched on rising infections and hospitalizations among children.
“Certainly more children are being infected with the highly transmissible virus, and with that, there naturally will be more hospitalizations in children,” he said.
The “final conclusion about the level of severity in children remains to be determined,” according to Fauci.
Coronavirus cases among children are “extremely high and increasing,” according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. Nearly 200,000 pediatric cases were reported last week.