Delta variant doubles COVID hospital risk: Study

A British study suggests people who get COVID-19 from the Delta variant are about twice as likely to be hospitalised compared with the Alpha variant.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 doubles the risk of hospitalisation compared with the Alpha variant it has supplanted as the dominant strain worldwide, researchers reported in The Lancet on Saturday. Only 1.8 percent of the more than 43,000 COVID-19 cases assessed in comparing the two variants were in patients who had been fully vaccinated. Three-quarters were completely unvaccinated, and 24 percent had received only one jab of a two-dose vaccine.