Covid-19 – Omicron accounts for half of conventional hospital admissions

Vaccine protection against the Omicron variant is becoming clearer. The Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) published new data on the epidemic on Friday. This organization attached to different ministries compares the level of protection of the vaccine according to the type of variant, Delta or Omicron, responsible for the infection.

And the first lesson of this study: the overrepresentation of non-vaccinated people in hospitals.

According to their data, between December 6, 2021 and January 2, 2022, the 9% of people who had never reached out alone accounted for 44% of admissions to conventional hospitalization and 44% of deaths after a hospital stay. ‘hospital. It is even more for entries in critical care (58%) during these four weeks.

However, Dress notes that the type of variant can be a game-changer and affect different population categories differently. Thus, if Omicron, today the majority in France, particularly affects the youngest and vaccinated people, the Delta variant contaminates most of those who are never bitten.

However, this variant that appeared in South Africa remains less dangerous, say the scientists. As well,“at a comparable population size, if there are more vaccinated people infected than non-vaccinated people infected with Omicron, the risk of the former being hospitalized is much lower than that of the latter”, they explain. In short, the two antagonistic effects compensate each other. And as figures are sometimes worth more than words: during the week of January 9, Omicron concerned 88% of positive PCR tests and 52% of conventional hospital admissions, but it is responsible for only 31% of critical care admissions.

Another element noted by the researchers: the role of vaccination, including the booster dose, in the face of variants. In this game, it is Delta who scores more points. Indeed, according to the figures of the Dress, the vaccine effectiveness against hospitalizations is greater on the side of the old strain than at Omicron. It is around 85% for those vaccinated without booster against Delta, but decreases to 50% against Omicron. For those vaccinated, with a booster this time, the protection rises to more than 95% against the first, and is reduced to 80% against the second. Similar deviations are noted regarding the appearance of severe forms.

Last, but not least, the duration of hospitalizations seems to differ according to the variants. “Specifically, it is 6.5 days for patients hospitalized with Omicron compared to 9.8 days with Delta, which represents a 33% reduction in hospitalization time”, note the researchers who are awaiting new data to confirm this first observation.

According to data from Public Health France, Thursday January 13, France again passed the bar of 300,000 contaminations (305,322). At the start of the month, almost 90% of the viruses sequenced had the Omicron variant mark.