Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/9 - “Hospital admissions are rising across Europe and the US as highly transmissible #COVID19 variants drive infections, but the resulting illness is less likely to be severe or cause death than in previous waves, according to the FT and health experts.”
ft.com/content/f4794a…

2/9 - “The number of new #COVID19 admissions has grown by 40 per cent in the last week in France, 34 per cent in England and more than 20 per cent in several other European countries. The wave has been fuelled by the #BA5 #Omicron sub-variant.”

3/9 - “The rate of increased hospital admissions in the US is currently slower than in Europe at 6%. This reflects the decline of the #BA2 variant in the US. But as the #BA5 variant becomes dominant, the overall rate of growth is likely to accelerate.”

4/9 - “Despite signs that the variants are more able than predecessors to evade the protection of both vaccines and prior infections, in countries experiencing #BA5 waves deaths showed only very small increases relative to hosp., which themselves remain well below record highs.”

5/9 - “Several experts said sufferers were less likely to require treatment in intensive care than in earlier phases of the pandemic and a greater proportion were only incidentally testing positive after admission for other reasons than in previous waves.”

6/9 - “[In Lombardy] between 10 and 15% of patients required intensive care at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. By the fourth wave this had fallen to 8% and currently we are probably between 2 and 3% of patients . . . so it’s a very different wave from the past.”

7/9 - “[It is] unclear whether lower numbers of ICU admissions suggested #BA4 and #BA5 were intrinsically milder sublineages, or that 2 years into the pandemic the majority of people were either vaccinated or had some protection against severe disease through prior infection.”

8/9 - “Each new variant’s advantage now comes from its ability to evade immunity,rather than from greater transmissibility. With different combinations of variant and immunity in different places,it is difficult to use data from one country to predict what’s happening elsewhere.”

9/9 - “In SAfr, the #BA4/#BA5 wave was less than 1/2 the size of its original #Omicron wave last winter.
In DK, the #BA5 wave looks to be topping out at around 1/5 of the previous peak.
UK hospital admissions are already 77% of the way to their 2022 high point and still rising.”