Aletho News

UK data tables on September 3 say delta causes less mortality and less % of admissions than alpha or beta

By Meryl Nass, MD | September 4, 2021

This briefing provides an update on previous briefings up to 20 August 2021:

Technical briefing 22, 3 September 2021

On pages 15-20 (Table 4) we see the following (I will use (I) for inclusion and (E) for exclusion, which are described below:

% admitted from the ER  (E)           (I)           Mortality rate, overall

alpha  < 50 years                          1.0%        1.4%            0.1%

alpha  > 50                                    5.3%        8.6%            4.8%

beta   < 50                                    1.0%         1.5%             0.2%

beta.  > 50                                    4.2%          9.0%            4.2%

delta  < 50                                    0.7%          1.2%            0.0%

delta  > 50                                    2.8%          6.2%            2.3%

Below are the odd inclusion and exclusion criteria.  But it really doesn’t matter which you use, for delta is milder using either, both in terms of deaths and in terms of percent hospitalized from the ER.

# Inclusion: Including cases with the same specimen and attendance dates

‡ Exclusion: Excluding cases with the same specimen and attendance dates. Cases where specimen date is the same as date of emergency care visit are excluded to help remove cases picked up via routine testing in healthcare settings whose primary cause of attendance is not COVID-19. This underestimates the number of individuals in hospital with COVID-19 but only includes those who tested positive prior to the day of their emergency care visit. Some of the cases detected on the day of admission may have attended for a diagnosis unrelated to COVID-19. ^ Total deaths in any setting (regardless of hospitalisation status) within 28 days of positive specimen date.

On page 11 the report claims that the risk of hospitalization is greater for delta (which is undermined by the data table 4 in the report) but it cites some other data set to make the point:

“The crude analysis indicates that the proportion of Delta cases who present to emergency care is greater than that of Alpha, but a more detailed analysis of 43,338 COVID-19 cases indicates that the risk of hospitalisation among Delta cases is 2.26 times greater compared to Alpha (Twohig and others, 2021 ).”

While the proportion who present to the ER with delta may be greater, this could be a function of all the fearmongering about the delta strain.  The data presented, however, are very reassuring about delta mortality and hospitalization rates.  The data are incredibly reassuring about young people:  those under 50. Only 0.03% have died (my calculation) which is counted as 0% in Table 4. A considerably lower proportion than for alpha or beta.

I have omitted the other variants here because there were less than 500 total cases identified for each in the Table.

September 5, 2021 - Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, UK