What if the Micron had an evolution like a cold

Data is arriving, albeit slowly, from South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first studied. This time around, the data doesn't appear to be as dramatic as previously thought. Here is a snippet from a recent report from hospitals in Tshwane, South Africa that was hit hard by the variant:

A first significant finding in this analysis is the much shorter average length of stay of 2.8 days for SARS-CoV-2 positive patients admitted to COVID wards in the past two weeks compared to an average length of stay of 8.5. days in the past 18 months. The NICD reports similar length of stay for all hospitals in Tshwane in its weekly report. It is also shorter than the Gauteng or national average length of stay reported by the NICD in previous waves.

In summary, the first impression on examination of the 166 patients admitted since the Omicron variant appeared, along with the clinical profile picture of 42 patients currently admitted to the COVID wards of the SBAH / TDH complex, is that in most hospitals the hospitalizations are for diagnoses not related to COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 positivity is an accidental finding in these patients and is largely driven by hospital policy that requires testing of all patients requiring hospitalization.

So most patients didn't even know they had it, and it was discovered "accidentally" while they were there for other problems. We assume for the sake of this report that the test is accurate.

The virus appears extremely virulent, and for this reason, however, it is to be expected that the number of hospitalizations will increase due to the rapid spread of cases. However, at present, the virus doesn't look that bad….

Meanwhile, the Financial Times published an article on Omicron on Saturday: What we know, what we don't know, and where things might be headed .

We could concentrate everything in some data. First of all, it seems that the Omicron variant is able to more easily evade the immunity of the recovered and vaccinated, so much so that the rate of people who can reinfect increases.

At the same time, the number of deaths dropped from the number of cases in Gauteng

So the evolution of Omicron, at present seems to be that of the .. cold: a disease for which immunity does not develop, but which has very limited mortality, the only danger of which can derive from the extremely high number of cases of infections. Because an infinitesimal percentage of severe cases out of a large number is a problem, anyway.

In this case, the cure would have been to increase the number of beds, at least seasonally. That is the only thing that, for now, the regions have not done, given that just over 900 of 3591 new places in resuscitation have made them.

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The article And if the Omicron had an evolution like a cold comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/e-se-lomicron-avesse-unevoluzione-come-il-raffreddore/ on Mon, 06 Dec 2021 07:00:26 +0000.