Covid-19: Delta variant doubles risk of hospital admission compared with alpha variant, study shows

Patients with the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 have more than double the risk of hospital admission compared with those infected with the alpha variant, according to a large UK study.1 The research, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases , is the first to report hospital admission risk for the delta compared with the alpha variants based on cases confirmed by whole genome sequencing. Researchers analysed healthcare data from 43 338 positive covid-19 cases in England between 29 March and 23 May 2021. During the study period, 8682 patients were infected with the delta variant and 34 656 with the …