Omicron BA1 and BA2 appear to be no more severe than each other

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-08-23 01:00

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Omicron subvariants BA1 and BA2 are comparable in terms of their severity, according to researchers who matched about 20,000 patients infected with BA1 with the same amount of patients infected with BA2 and looked at the disease outcomes of both groups. Just 33 BA1 patients and 36 BA2 patients had severe, critical or fatal outcomes and just one of those 69 patients had received a third vaccine dose. The researchers say two and three vaccine doses were associated with a lower risk of severe outcomes, but prior infection was not.