A study has shown that individuals infected with the Delta variant of the coronavirus are likely twice as prone to requiring hospital treatment compared to those infected with the Alpha variant, which was first discovered in England last year. The study, based on over 43,000 COVID-19 infections among individuals who primarily had not received vaccines for disease prevention in England, compared the hospitalization risks for Delta variant cases, first identified in India, against those for Alpha variant cases.
Anne Presanis, one of the study leaders and a statistics expert at the University of Cambridge, stated, "Our analysis highlights that in the absence of a vaccine, any outbreak of the Delta variant will place a greater burden on healthcare compared to the Alpha outbreak." The study focused on infection cases between March and May during the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Britain, thus it could not assess the additional hospitalization risks for the unvaccinated or those who did not receive complete vaccination doses. This study, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Friday, is the largest to date in analyzing confirmed COVID-19 cases via the virus's genetic sequencing.
