World
Omicron less severe even for unvaccinated, says South African study
Unvaccinated people infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus may be less prone to severe illness and requiring hospital care or dying than was the case with previous variants, a South African study showed on Friday.
The study, by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in the Western Cape region, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, compared about 11,600 patients from the first three Covid-19 waves with about 5,100 from the Omicron-driven wave that began in November.
Omicron globally has tended to cause less severe disease, and proportionally fewer hospital admissions and deaths, than previous variants.
