Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Volume 120, Issue -, Pages 146-149Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2022.04.029
Keywords
COVID-19; Omicron; Infection fatality rate; Immune evasion
Categories
Funding
- Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [HKU C7123-20G]
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Based on data from South Africa and mathematical modeling, this study found that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but with significantly lower infection fatality rates than those of previous variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Objective: The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant has caused global concern. Previous studies have shown that the variant has enhanced immune evasion ability and transmissibility and reduced severity. Methods: In this study, we developed a mathematical model with time-varying transmission rate, vaccination, and immune evasion. We fit the model to reported case and death data up to February 6, 2022 to estimate the transmissibility and infection fatality ratio of the Omicron variant in South Africa. Results: We found that the high relative transmissibility of the Omicron variant was mainly due to its immune evasion ability, whereas its infection fatality rate substantially decreased by approximately 78.7% (95% confidence interval: 66.9%, 85.0%) with respect to previous variants. Conclusion: On the basis of data from South Africa and mathematical modeling, we found that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but with significantly lower infection fatality rates than those of previous variants of SARS-CoV-2. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )
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