According to an article published in the Journal of the Journal, a Harvard-led team of researchers found that the Omicron BA.2 variant — the Covid-19 strain that currently predominates in the United States — appears to have a lower mortality rate than previous strains of the virus. I found that it looks like American Medical Association last month.
The study, published Oct. 25, was led by Zachary H. Strasser, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and included researchers from HMS, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Minerva University. In this study, the mortality rate for the Omicron BA.2 subvariant he was found to be 0.3%. This is less than half of his 0.7% mortality rate for the Delta variant.
“This result suggests that the BA.2 lineage was inherently less severe than the original Omicron and Delta subspecies,” the authors write in their paper.
To compare the mortality rates of different Covid-19 strains, researchers used entropy balance.
“We want to compare patients treated the same way so that we can really understand the difference in severity,” Strasser said.
Researchers also considered the impact of potential confounding variables, such as patient comorbidities and previous infections, according to co-author of the study, HMS Professor Shawn N. Murphy.
“People are all vaccinated now, have been infected before, and have adjusted for all these different factors and treatments,” Murphy said.
The results of this study suggest a decreasing pattern of Covid-19 intensity, but the trajectory of the virus remains unclear.
“We’re only looking at three strains in the wild, but at least within those three strains, the subspecies seem to be weakening,” Strasser said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean the trend will continue.”
Strasser cautioned against making broad assumptions about the virus from this study.
“You might be tempted to look at this data and say that this means Covid is gone or less severe, but it’s really just three data points, three variants,” he said. Strasser added: “While this is good news and we hope this situation continues, it doesn’t necessarily have to.”
Strasser said his team hopes to conduct future studies using electronic health record data to examine the long-term effects of Covid-19, especially on patients suffering from severe cases of the virus. said.
“One of the benefits of electronic health records is the ability to capture long-term data,” he said. “This is an advantage if you’re thinking of something like Covid for the long haul and want to see what happens to patients over time.”
“We’re going to focus more on Covid’s longevity going forward,” Strasser said.
