Accident and emergency (AE) attendance in England following infection with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron or Delta

  1. Daniel J. Grint
  2. Kevin Wing
  3. Hamish P. Gibbs
  4. Stephen JW Evans
  5. Elizabeth Williamson
  6. Krishnan Bhaskaran
  7. Helen I McDonald
  8. Alex J. Walker
  9. David Evans
  10. George Hickman
  11. Rohini Mathur
  12. Anna Schultze
  13. Christopher T Rentsch
  14. John Tazare
  15. Ian J Douglas
  16. Helen J. Curtis
  17. Caroline E Morton
  18. Sebastian Bacon
  19. Simon Davy
  20. Brian MacKenna
  21. Peter Inglesby
  22. Richard Croker
  23. John Parry
  24. Frank Hester
  25. Sam Harper
  26. Nicholas J DeVito
  27. Will Hulme
  28. Chris Bates
  29. Jonathon Cockburn
  30. Amir Mehrkar
  31. Ben Goldacre
  32. Rosalind M. Eggo
  33. Laurie Tomlinson

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Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is increasing in prevalence around the world. Accurate estimation of disease severity associated with Omicron is critical for pandemic planning. We found lower risk of accident and emergency (AE) attendance following SARS-CoV-2 infection with Omicron compared to Delta (HR: 0.39 (95% CI: 0.30 – 0.51; P<.0001). For AE attendances that lead to hospital admission, Omicron was associated with an 85% lower hazard compared with Delta (HR: 0.14 (95% CI: 0.09 – 0.24; P<.0001)).

Conflicts of Interests

Nothing to declare.

Funding statement

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council MR/V015737/1. TPP provided technical expertise and infrastructure within their data centre pro bono in the context of a national emergency. Rosalind Eggo is funded by HDR UK (grant: MR/S003975/1), MRC (grant: MC_PC 19065), NIHR (grant: NIHR200908).

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.05.03.22274602: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has several limitations, AE attendance data does not include people who are admitted to hospital without going to AE. Our data include only people first testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. Re- infection with Omicron is common and extra immunity from prior infection may reduce the severity of Omicron further.(7, 8) Our study includes few people in the oldest age groups. Further detailed analysis of which groups remain at greatest risk from Omicron will be essential for health provision planning when societies move toward light touch restrictions in the presence of a high burden of circulating SARS-CoV-2.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.05.03.22274602v1 on medRxiv