Update (May 5, 2022): A preprint currently under review at Nature suggests that the Omicron variant may be as severe as previous variants when variables such as vaccination status are controlled for, according to Reuters.
When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 first began to spread rapidly and outcompete other variants in late 2021, it quickly became apparent that the variant was quite different than those that came before it.
Unlike Delta, which emerged in December 2020 and was linked to a massive surge in hospitalizations and deaths last year, Omicron didn’t seem to be as dangerous on the scale of individual infected people. Yet hospitals, clinics, and intensive care units have still filled up with patients as the tally of new cases and hospitalizations, currently at more than 145,000 in the United States, shattered records day after day, in no small part because a series of mutations in the virus’s ...
