New Paper: Outcomes of Omicron Vs Delta Infection in Care Home Residents

In this study, the Vivaldi team compared the severity of infection with the Omicron to the Delta variant of COVID-19 amongst care home residents taking part in the Vivaldi study. They looked at rates of hospitalisation and death in < 2200 residents in 259 care homes across England who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 between September 1 2021 and February 1 2022. Although they defined the variant that participants were infected with according to whether they had been infected in an Omicron-dominant or Delta-dominant period, in a subset of 937 residents the variant could be confirmed based on sequencing or PCR results. The study found that the risk of hospitalisation and death was significantly lower in residents who had been infected during the Omicron period when compared with the Delta period.

This is the largest study to describe the severity of Omicron infection in the care home population, who are at the highest risk of severe complications of COVID-19 infection. These results are encouraging as they suggest that despite a large surge of infections with the Omicron variant in the community which has coincided with the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions nationally, residents are at lower risk of severe infections, particularly as most of them have been vaccinated. However, it is important to continue to monitor infection rates in this vulnerable population as immunity may wane and there is a risk of the emergence of new variants over time.

Find out more about the Vivaldi Study

Read the full paper

Author: Dr Maria Krutikov