MONDAY, March 21, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Hospitalization rates associated with COVID-19 increased during the period of omicron dominance, with the lowest rates among vaccinated adults who had received a booster or a dose additional, according to a study published in the March 18 advance edition of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Christopher A. Taylor, Ph.D., of the CDC COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and colleagues analyzed data from the COVID-19 Hospitalizations Surveillance Network to compare rates of hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 in adults aged 18 years or older during the periods of delta (July 1 to December 18, 2021) and omicron (December 19, 2021 to January 31, 2022) variant dominance.
The researchers found that the weekly hospitalization rates associated with COVID-19 (hospitalizations per 100,000 adults) peaked at 38.4 during the omicron-dominant period, compared to 15.5 during the delta-dominance. Increases were observed in hospitalization rates among all adults, regardless of their vaccination status. In unvaccinated adults, hospitalization rates during peak omicron circulation remained 12 times higher than in vaccinated adults who received booster or supplemental doses and four times higher than in adults who received received a primary series with no booster or additional dose. Peak hospitalization rates were nearly four times higher among non-Hispanic black adults than among non-Hispanic white adults during the omicron-dominated period; this rate was the highest observed among all racial and ethnic groups during the pandemic.
“These results suggest that the increased risk of hospitalization among black adults during the Omicron-dominant period may also be due, in part, to lower proportions of black adults receiving both the primary and booster doses,” the authors write.
One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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