Omicron causes more infections, but less hospitalization, researchers say: NPR

NomiHealth employees are lining up for a COVID-19 test in North Miami, Florida on Tuesday. Omicron variants have unleashed new fears and uncertainties for travelers, shoppers, and party attendees across the United States.

Malta Lavandier / AP

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Malta Lavandier / AP

NomiHealth employees are lining up for a COVID-19 test in North Miami, Florida on Tuesday. Omicron variants have unleashed new fears and uncertainties for travelers, shoppers, and party attendees across the United States.

Malta Lavandier / AP

A new analysis by the University of Washington Omicron surge By the end of January, a large wave of infections will peak, but for most people serious illnesses can be much less.

Analysis shows that omicron waves infect more than 400,000 people a day in the United States when the waves occur in about six weeks. This is well above the 250,000 people infected daily with the virus during the peak of last winter’s surge.

However, researchers estimate that most people who catch Omicron do not get sick or only get mild illness. As a result, the analysis concludes that the proportion of people hospitalized and dying in Omicron is much lower.

Other researchers wonder if there is sufficient evidence to reliably estimate how the diseased Omicron makes people. However, they agree that the vast number of people who have caught the virus can still overwhelm the hospital.

“What is it based on?” Natalie Dean, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at Emory University, wrote in an email to the NPR. “Evidence of reduced severity is suggestive, but still very premature.”

Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that Omicron is now less well known and would make any projection “with a grain of salt.”

“Some of the qualitative things they say seem somewhat rational, but it’s hard to say for sure at this point,” the wrestler said in an email to NPR. “I would certainly say that too much is unknown about Omicron so far to make what I consider to be a formal or single prediction.”

“I think they may be right to some extent, but at this point it’s hard to imagine what data these deaths are based on,” the wrestler wrote.

Globally, analysis predicts that the world will experience more than 3 billion infections in the next three months. This represents the entire two years of the pandemic, said Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics at the University. ..

Researchers predict that by mid-January, there could be 35 million new cases per day worldwide. This is three times the previous highest daily infection rate.

President Joe Biden on Monday Announced his plans to fight the surge 500 million home test kits and support teams in the US Hospitals that can be overwhelmed by new cases..

John Helton of NPR contributed to this report.