2022 will be the fourth calendar year we've had COVID-19, and Omicron is the third variant. Many people are looking at Omicron as "another flu." But is that really the case? Here's the numbers.
Cases
It's clear: Omicron is more transmissible (transfers between people) than Delta or Alpha. Here’s why. Omicron began to spread extensively on 8 December (Source) and it was uncoincidentally when global COVID-19 cases began to skyrocket (Source). As of writing, there have been 364,191,494 cases worldwide.
Deaths
There’s a downtick in the amount of deaths COVID-19 has caused recently, despite the insane case numbers we mentioned earlier (Source). Weekly death numbers have about halved since January of 2021
Vaccines
More than half of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, though only a fraction of those have gotten a third “booster” shot. (Source) Omicron, however, seems to lower vaccine efficacy dramatically in comparison to Delta (Source, pg. 13)
Pfizer and BioNTech have recently launched clinical trials of an Omicron-specific vaccine against COVID-19. (Source)
Symptoms
Omicron tends to have reduced hospitalization numbers compared to Delta and Alpha. (Source, pg. 9)
Conclusion
Omicron, which, while being able to infect many more people than Delta or Alpha, tends to be less deadly.
