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Top infectious diseases expert Dr Faheem Younus has shared a piece of "good news" amid the Omicron surge across the world. According to Dr Younus, the new Covid-19 variant Omicron causes “significantly less" severe disease as compared to the widely prevalent Delta variant of coronavirus.
Citing a study of hospitalised Covid-19 patients conducted in South Africa, Dr Younus said a similar pattern of omicron has been shown in various studies. The data shows acute respiratory symptoms among 31 per cent of Omicron patients as compared to 91 per cent of Delta patients analysed in the study.
Also read: Omicron is largely resistant in these 2 conditions, shows study
Duration of hospitalisation was reduced to three days in case of patients infected with Omicron, as compared to seven days among Delta patients. Among the Delta patients, 69 per cent required hospitalisations, while it was 41 per cent in the case of Omicron.
Among all those analysed, 30 per cent of Delta patients had to undergo ICU admission, while only 18 per cent of the Omicron patients analysed were admitted to ICU.
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Also, 12 per cent of the total patients analysed were put on a ventilator as compared to 1.6 per cent in the case of Omicron. The mortality rate stood at 29 per cent among Delta patients, while the mortality rate was 3 per cent among Omicron patients.
Dr Younus, however, said despite these positive insights, there were some limitations to the said study. He said there were younger patients in the Omicron group, and that the outcome in that group could be better due to "prior infection or vaccine-induced immunity". The patient's median age for Delta and Omicron groups was 59 and 36, respectively.
He said "sequencing data" was also not available in the case of the Omicron group. However, Dr Younus said similar patterns have been shown in various studies when it comes to Omicron.
Meanwhile, the world is currently seeing an unprecedented surge of coronavirus cases, with US and European countries contributing the most. India also saw a single-day rise of 27,553 new coronavirus cases today, while the Omicron infection tally has reached 1,525 in the country.
As per the Reuters data, COVID-19 infections are still rising in 101 countries. Countries reporting the most new infections each day are US (3,26,455), UK (1,49,513), France (1,21,566), Spain (82,391), and Italy (79,716), the data shows. The US, Russia and Poland are the countries reporting most deaths each day.
