South African doctors see signs omicron is milder than delta | ABC News / AP News |

According to South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases:

• Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves.
• Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time - about 2.8 days compared to eight days.
• Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country's earlier outbreaks.

"At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease," Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute said, citing the national institute's figures and other reports. "It's early days, and we need to get the final data. Often hospitalizations and deaths happen later, and we are only two weeks into this wave."

New work from AHRI's @sigallab strongly suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 #Omicron variant escapes antibody immunity induced by the Pfizer vaccine, but that considerable immunity is retained in people who were both vaccinated & previously infected. [_link] pic.twitter.com/3phPFyKEPh

— Africa Health Research Institute (@AHRI_News) December 7, 2021