Is the Indian variant really more like to land you in hospital? That is the claim being widely reported this morning, based on Public Health England’s technical briefing 14. The briefing claims that the Indian (or Delta variant) is associated with a ‘significantly increased risk of hospitalisation within 14 days of specimen date.’ If you are infected with the Indian variant you are 2.61 times as like to require hospitalisation within 14 days, relative to the risk if you are infected with the Kent variant. And you are 1.67 times at greater risk of having to seek A&E treatment or be hospitalised.
It is only when PHE tried to adjust the results for age, sex, ethnicity, area of residence and vaccine status that they detected a higher risk from the Indian variant
The complicating factor is that the raw data actually points a little in the opposite direction. The full study analysed over 200,000 cases of Covid sequenced between 1 October 2020 and 31 May 2021, 94.7
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