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Research shows the risk of death from Covid for over 70s has decreased by tenfold compared to a year ago, thanks to vaccines, natural immunity, treatments, and the replacement of Delta by the mild Omicron variant.
In younger age groups the decline is sharper with the risk of death to healthy teens “almost zero”.
Professor Anthony Brookes, an expert in genetics and health data at University of Leicester, helped compile the research based on Office of National Statistics, Government and NHS infection reports.
He said Covid no longer posed a significant threat to “the vast majority of people”
“We will not be in anything like the same place in January 2022 as we were in January 2021. Infected individuals are at dramatically less risk of becoming seriously ill or dying than a year ago,” he said.
He added: “Over the last month the risk has been dropping further thanks to Omicron now accounting for around 95 per cent of cases in England. Omicron is around 4-fold less dangerous – it’s like nature’s vaccine.”
He added: “There has always been over a thousand fold difference in risk of serious illness or death between the old and the young. Currently the risk of death for the population as a whole is no worse than for seasonal influenza. For healthy children the risk is miniscule.”
At the start of the pandemic on average those over 70 had roughly a ten percent risk of dying from Covid-19 if infected.
This ‘Infection Fatality Rate’ (IFR) has now fallen to 1-2 percent for this especially vulnerable section of society.
The data also show each 15 year drop in age brings about a ten fold fall in risk, with healthy teenagers at “almost zero risk,” of dying.
“Younger people now have a higher risk of dying from a car crash in a whole year, than they do from Covid-19. Since their serious Covid risk is already very low, it is hard to identify any good reason for imposing or coercing youngsters to take on the known risks of vaccination.”
He added: “Covid-19 is progressively evolving to become another form of the common cold. Omicron takes us further down that path by reducing IFR at least three fold. Would a normal society undertake mass testing and require isolation for the common cold?”
However, he said despite the reduced severity of covid disease, hospitals are still likely to be under “severe pressure” this month due to the large number of hospital acquired infections, staff isolation rules, the non-covid backlog together with infection control measures which slow the pace of hospital procedures.
“Even if Omicron caused no deaths or severe illness, hospitals would still struggle this winter because of the measures brought in to control covid, as well as the fact that hospitals are striving to clear the non-covid backlog.”
Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious disease at the University of East Anglia said: “There is no doubt the illness we are seeing now is less severe than at the start. We are seeing a big shift towards covid becoming the common cold due to a range of factors including prior infection and vaccines.
“There is a point where we have to ask why are we testing and isolating people who just have a common cold?
“We could bring down our isolation requirements to five days from a positive test – after five days there is no real advantage in isolating people. By Easter I think we could end mass testing and test only in hospitals unless things turn out worse than we expect.”
He added: “We also need to stop mass testing healthy children without symptoms. The harm to education from having to isolate healthy children if they test positive now outweighs any benefit to those children and we cannot continue.”
Robert Dingwall, former government pandemic advisor and professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University said: “It may take another couple of weeks to be certain about the impact of omicron on older people, because of the disruption to the statistics over Christmas and New Year. However, all the signs are that the micro-management of everyday life will very soon be redundant.
Dismantling controls is, though, much harder than introducing them, especially when there are strong social, economic, and political investments in there continuation. What we now need to do is to build more resilience into our public services so they can cope with periodic waves of sickness absence. Ten years of austerity has stripped away that cushion and it must be restored.”
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