Eurosurv. SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 both show similarly reduced disease severity of COVID-19 compared to Delta, Germany, 2021 to 2022

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• Claudia Sievers[SUP]1,2,3,4[/SUP] , Benedikt Zacher[SUP]1,4[/SUP] , Alexander Ullrich[SUP]1[/SUP] , Matthew Huska[SUP]5[/SUP] , Stephan Fuchs[SUP]5[/SUP] , Silke Buda[SUP]1[/SUP] , Walter Haas[SUP]1[/SUP] , Michaela Diercke[SUP]1[/SUP] , Matthias an der Heiden[SUP]1[/SUP] , Stefan Kröger[SUP]1[/SUP]

German national surveillance data analysis shows that hospitalisation odds associated with Omicron lineage BA.1 or BA.2 infections are up to 80% lower than with Delta infection, primarily in ≥ 35-year-olds. Hospitalised vaccinated Omicron cases’ proportions (2.3% for both lineages) seemed lower than those of the unvaccinated (4.4% for both lineages). Independent of vaccination status, the hospitalisation frequency among cases with Delta seemed nearly threefold higher (8.3%) than with Omicron (3.0% for both lineages), suggesting that Omicron inherently causes less severe disease.



https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2022.27.22.2200396#html_fulltext