CDC confirms Omicron less severe than other variants

Thirty-one states, as well as Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, are reporting decreasing or plateauing new COVID-19 case averages, ABC News reports, signaling that the massive surge caused by the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant may be receding.New data published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report show that illnesses caused by Omicron are less severe than previous variants, but have still strained US healthcare systems due to the sheer volume of cases.Omicron was first confirmed in the United States on Dec 1, 2021, and as of Jan 15, 2022, represented 99.5% of all sequenced viruses in the country.

To gauge the severity of cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compared that 6-week timeframe with cases and outcomes from Dec 1, 2020, through Feb 28, 2021 (winter 2020-21, when the wild-type strain was predominant), and Jul 15 to Oct 31, 2021, when Delta (B1617.2) was the most dominant variant."The highest daily 7-day moving average to date of cases (798,976 daily cases during January 9–15, 2022), emergency department (ED) visits (48,238), and admissions (21,586) were reported during the Omicron period, however, the highest daily 7-day moving average of deaths (1,854) was lower than during previous periods," the authors wrote.The ratio of peak emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and deaths to case, were all lower in Omicron than other variants.The findings confirm data from South Africa, the United Kingdom, and health systems in Texas and California.More than 1.1 million pediatric casesAccording to the latest update from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), nearly 1,151,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported from Jan 13 to 20, a 17% increase over the previous week."Over 10.6