MADRID/LONDON — Using the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 to gauge the severity of the pandemic may not give an accurate picture in the Omicron era as more and more patients with the virus are being admitted for other reasons, some scientists say.
In Britain, the Omicron variant has driven case numbers to record highs since it emerged at the end of November but the number of hospital patients with Covid-19 on mechanical ventilation has barely changed, government data shows. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even said last week that as many as 30 per cent of people in hospital with Covid-19 actually become infected while hospitalised — something Hunter partly attributed to Omicron's overwhelming contagiousness.Hunter said intensive care occupancy was a better measure of the real severity of an outbreak: "If you're in an ICU bed with Covid, you're probably there because of Covid, rather than just with it.
"The numbers of infected people admitted to non-critical areas and intensive care units, however they are counted, are overloading hospitals ... and exhausting the professionals who have been managing the pandemic for two years," he said. In Denmark, about 15 per cent of people hospitalised people over the course of 18 months had tested positive for coronavirus, but displayed no symptoms and had been admitted for other reasons, a study published this month by the country's top infectious disease authority the Statens Serum Institut showed.
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