TY - JOUR T1 - SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 both show similarly reduced disease severity of COVID-19 compared to Delta, Germany, 2021 to 2022 AU - Sievers, Claudia AU - Zacher, Benedikt AU - Ullrich, Alexander AU - Huska, Matthew AU - Fuchs, Stephan AU - Buda, Silke AU - Haas, Walter AU - Diercke, Michaela AU - an der Heiden, Matthias AU - Kröger, Stefan AB - German national surveillance data analysis shows that hospitalisation odds associated with Omicron lineage BA.1 or BA.2 infections are up to 80% lower than with Delta infection, primarily in ≥ 35-year-olds. Hospitalised vaccinated Omicron cases’ proportions (2.3% for both lineages) seemed lower than those of the unvaccinated (4.4% for both lineages). Independent of vaccination status, the hospitalisation frequency among cases with Delta seemed nearly threefold higher (8.3%) than with Omicron (3.0% for both lineages), suggesting that Omicron inherently causes less severe disease. KW - 610 Medizin und Gesundheit PY - 2022 LA - eng PB - Robert Koch-Institut JO - Eurosurveillance VL - 27 IS - 22 DO - 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2022.27.22.2200396 ER -