Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Omicron ‘Seems to be Less Severe’ than Predecessors

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta said Wednesday he believed Covid-19’s Omicron variant “seemed to be” a less severe form of the virus than its predecessors.

In a segment with the network’s Jim Sciutto and Erica Hill, Gupta said it “had become clear” that Omicron was more transmissible, noting that while the Delta variant of the virus “seemed to be doubling every couple of weeks,” Omicron appeared to be “doubling every couple of days.”

“I think it’s early to tell, but when we look at the South African data, because that’s where you had a lot of the initial data, it does seem to be less severe. … You kind of look at the number of cases overall, and you say, ‘What is the percentage of those people that are developing severe illness?’ In the early days of the pandemic we could say, based on this number of infections, we can anticipate this number of hospitalizations a few weeks later. That percentage, that proportion seems to be lower.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicated on Tuesday that the Omicron variant accounted for 2.9 percent of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the United States. for the week ending Dec. 11, though the number was as high as 13 percent in New York and New Jersey. The agency said earlier that of the first 43 patients discovered with the variant in the U.S., 34 had been fully vaccinated before contracting it, or 79 percent.

To date, however, the variant has resulted in few confirmed deaths. Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed the first death related to the variant within his country’s borders just on Monday.

“Is that because the virus is causing less disease?” Gupta said. “Is that because there’s some existing immunity in the population? Not sure, but overall, I think the news on the severity of the disease is better, and that it doesn’t cause as severe disease.”

Watch above via CNN.