(Reuters) – The Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants of the novel coronavirus increased patients’ risks of hospitalization and death by 60% compared to earlier forms of the virus, and the Delta variant was even more virulent, according to researchers who studied more than 211,000 patients in Canada diagnosed with COVID-19 between February and June 2021.
Alpha, Beta and Gamma – first seen in the UK, South Africa and Brazil – more than doubled the risk of needing intensive care, even though the patients were generally younger and healthier than those infected earlier in the pandemic.
With the Delta variant, first identified in India and now becoming dominant in many countries, “risks of hospitalization and death more than doubled, and risk of ICU admission more than tripled” compared to earlier SARS-CoV-2 strains, said Dr. David Fisman of the University of Toronto, who coauthored a report posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review.
He told Reuters his team did find an overall downward trend in disease severity over time, likely because of vaccinations.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3egxgjs medRxiv, online July 12, 2021.
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