[D66] [JD: 118] COVID-19 is becoming more mild

[R.O.]

hartgroup.org <https://www.hartgroup.org/covid-19-is-becoming-more-mild/>


  COVID-19 is becoming more mild

3-4 minutes
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/More good news being ignored by media/

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COVID-19 has been presenting as a common cold since May. So said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHBua3aXQ7c> (6 mins in) Prof Tim
Spector, who runs the Zoe Symptom tracker app. Headache, sore throat and
runny nose are now the three most common presenting symptoms. There is
no loss of smell and cough is only the fifth most common symptom. 

Rather than present this for the good news it is, the researchers chose
to present it as a warning
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/14/delta-variant-covid-symptoms-include-headaches-sore-throat-and-runny-nose>
that people may fail to recognise it. If COVID-19 is becoming more mild
in its symptomatology, fewer people will develop severe symptoms and
fewer people will die. One of the old circulating common cold
coronaviruses <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/>,
OC43, was thought to have begun as a pandemic strain meaning there is a
precedent for such an evolution. If this is the case it is undoubtedly
good news.

Is there evidence of this effect in hospital admission data? A simple
way to analyse the data is to compare total cases diagnosed in one week
with hospital admissions a week later. Taking cases for the week ending
31 May
<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201>
and comparing them to admissions to hospital of already diagnosed cases
the week ending 7 June, the hospitalisation rate was 18% for the Alpha
variant and only 3.4% for the Delta variant. 

It could be argued that this is because older people are not catching
the Delta variant (Indian variant), yet. Indeed, models
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/992981/10_June_2021_Risk_assessment_for_SARS-CoV-2_variant_DELTA.pdf>
which account for the age difference purport to show that the Delta
variant is more dangerous. There have been only 223 total admissions of
patients diagnosed in the community since February. Is it really
reasonable to conclude that the Delta strain leads to more hospital
admissions by age based on such small numbers, especially when the raw
data shows it leads to 1/6th of the admissions of the Alpha variant?

The overall percentage of cases that end up in hospital has fallen since
the Delta variant became dominant. Furthermore, the slight rise in
hospital admissions has not translated into the expected rise in total
patients. This means that the length of stay for patients admitted with
a positive test is shorter than it was before, again indicating good news.

Claims also continue to be made that the Delta variant is more
transmissible
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/992981/10_June_2021_Risk_assessment_for_SARS-CoV-2_variant_DELTA.pdf>.
The best real world measure of the transmissibility of a variant is the
secondary attack rate: the proportion of contacts that catch the virus
from a known case. Much has been made of the higher transmission rate in
the Delta variant. The transmission rate of a new variant will, by
definition, be higher than the current variant. However, the
transmission rate for the Alpha (UK) variant fell
<https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/06/13/claims-the-indian-variant-is-hyper-transmissible-are-nonsense-heres-the-graph-that-proves-it/>
from 15% to 8% over the last 6 months at a fairly constant rate
independent of the level of vaccination. The transmission rate for the
Delta variant peaked at less than 14% and is already falling. The
transmission rate need only be slightly higher than the Alpha variant
for the Delta to become dominant, as it has, but the other claims about
transmissibility have been overblown.

Overall there is minimal real world evidence of the Delta variant
behaving in a significantly more transmissible or dangerous way and the
symptomatology appears to be becoming more mild.

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