According to a report from The New York Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new data indicates that while omicron now accounts for most infections, delta may be driving most of the hospitalizations. The report comes amid a correction issued by the CDC.
Initially, the CDC report, indicated by the Times, stated that omicron infections accounted for 73% of all COVID-19 cases for the week ending on Dec. 18. After a correction, however, new data from the agency maintains that omicron accounted for 59% of all infections ending that week.
"Setting aside the question of how the initial estimate was so inaccurate, if CDC's new estimate of #Omicron prevalence is precise then it suggests that a good portion of the current hospitalizations we're seeing from Covid may still be driven by Delta infections," Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner tweeted on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, in a separate Times article, Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, said that the milder "Omicron is likely to push Delta out."
"Maybe pushing Delta out is actually a good thing, and we're looking at something we can live with more easily and that will disrupt us less than the previous variants," he said, pointing to a new study he conducted indicating as much.
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