Having acquired the reputation of being less dangerous than all other variants of Sars-Cov-2, Omicron is according to a study which has yet to be validated, just as dangerous as other variants of the coronavirus.
These scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital, Minerva University and Harvard Medical School, who conducted this work with 130,000 patients. “To test this hypothesis, we linked state-level immunization data with quality-controlled electronic health records from a large health care system, including 13 hospitals, in Massachusetts, USA,” write Researchers.
They came to the following conclusion: “We found that the risks of hospitalization and mortality were almost identical between the different time periods” referring to times over the past two years when different variants were dominant across the world.
To arrive at this observation, they compared the risks of hospitalization and mortality on the different waves of the virus. However, their study still needs to be peer reviewed, as it is only in the pre-publication stage at the moment. The authors are nevertheless aware of certain limitations, relating to the number of vaccinated patients as well as an underestimated total number of infections during the last Omicron waves. Indeed, their data excluded patients who performed rapid tests at home.
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