7 Day Case Rate, Positivity Rate, Serious Case Rate and Vaccination Rate across Europe on (Saturday) 1st January 2022

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1. #How serious is Omicron?#

   *(tl;dr: about 1/3 of delta)*

   So I did some spot analysis on [my data](https://i.redd.it/8j327xsdwu881.png) a few days ago for the serious case rate with Omicron vs. Delta.

   On that day, serious case rate in the UK was 0.13% and the EU was 1.4% which is almost all Omicron. I’ve taken a few samples from back before Omicron just to give a flavour:

   – 30th March: 1.94% (EU av. 2.7%)
   – 30th April: 1.50% (EU av. 3.2%)
   – 30th May: 0.74% (EU av. 4.9%)
   – 30th June: 0.32% (EU av. 8.9%)
   – 30th July: 0.23% (EU av. 2.0%)
   – 30th August: 0.41% (EU av. 1.5%)
   – 30th September: 0.42% (EU av. 2.4%)
   – 30th October: 0.27% (EU av. 1.6%)

   Note that the EU average includes countries with significantly worse vaccination rates and some countries classify serious cases differently to us – there was a pretty nasty spike in hospitalisations in eastern europe in June which increased the levels then in particular. Also note that dates like March and April were before we started vaccinating the younger population so they are influenced by high vaccination levels. That said, as long as we compare EU rates with EU rates and UK rates with UK rates we should get a pretty good idea.

   Excluding the outliers the average of the delta sample set is 0.398% for the UK and 4.01% for the EU, which would mean the current serious case rates of 0.13% and 1.4% respectively are 32.6% for the UK and 34.9% for the EU, which would suggest Omicron is 1/3rd as severe.

   I saw a [news article](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/hospitalisation-risk-omicron-around-one-third-delta-uk-analysis-shows-2021-12-31/) today that suggested some Cambridge biostatisticians had also come to the conclusion it’s about 1/3 as severe as delta. I think they probably just stole my analysis (/s), because I posted this on another thread two days ago.