This cohort study within the EuCARE project entitled: “In-hospital mortality during the wild-type, alpha, delta, and omicron SARS-CoV-2 waves: a multinational cohort study in the EuCARE project”, uses data from 38,585 adult patients hospitalised with SARS-CoV-2 Wild-type, Alpha, Delta, or Omicron infection across 10 centres in 9 countries: Germany, Italy, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and United Kingdom.
Below you can find some key important results from this study:
• Shows that in-hospital mortality decreases throughout the pandemic, in particular since the emergence of the Omicron variant.
• It also shows that age is an effect measure modifier regarding the association between variant and in-hospital mortality highlighting the importance of performing age-stratified analyses by variant.
• Reinforces the importance of sustained efforts to protect the elderly and frail individuals with adequate protective measures.
• Comparing Omicron sublineages, BA.1 carried a higher risk of mortality than that seen with the more recently circulating Omicron sublineages BA.2 and BA.5
• Alpha and Delta had an increased risk of in-hospital mortality versus Omicron, not observed when restricting the analyses to unvaccinated participants.
• Authors suggest that the observed decrease in in-hospital mortality may reflect a combined effect of immunity from vaccinations and previous infections; differences in virulence between SARS-CoV-2 variants may also have contributed.
• Strengths: same inclusion criteria for patients hospitalised with COVID-19 across multiple countries, primarily in Europe, but also outside of Europe, while most other original research articles were confined to one centre, one region, or one country. This favours external validity by investigating the overall effects of SARS-CoV-2 variants across a wide range of countries and continents.
Read more at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(24)00021-8/fulltext
This study is part of the EuCARE Project funded by the European Union´s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 101046016.
The EuCARE project also studies long covid, immunological response and the impact of containment and screening measures in schools.