World
Omicron less severe even for unvaccinated, says South African study
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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The study, by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in the Western Cape region, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, compared about 11,600 patients from the first three Covid-19 waves with about 5,100 from the Omicron-driven wave that began in November.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.