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. 2023 Oct 31:151:e189.
doi: 10.1017/S0950268823001760.

Risk of severe outcomes among Omicron sub-lineages BA.4.6, BA.2.75, and BQ.1 compared to BA.5 in England

Giulia Seghezzo  1 , Sophie G Nash  1 , Nurin A Aziz  1 , Russell Hope  2 , Jamie L Bernal  3   4 , Eileen Gallagher  5 , Gavin Dabrera  1 , Simon Thelwall  1
Affiliations

Risk of severe outcomes among Omicron sub-lineages BA.4.6, BA.2.75, and BQ.1 compared to BA.5 in England

Giulia Seghezzo et al. Epidemiol Infect. .

Abstract

Since the emergence of Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2021, a number of sub-lineages have arisen and circulated internationally. Little is known about the relative severity of Omicron sub-lineages BA.2.75, BA.4.6, and BQ.1. We undertook a case-control analysis to determine the clinical severity of these lineages relative to BA.5, using whole genome sequenced, PCR-confirmed infections, between 1 August 2022 and 27 November 2022, among those who presented to emergency care in England 14 days after and up to one day prior to the positive specimen. A total of 10,375 episodes were included in the analysis; of which, 5,207 (50.2%) were admitted to the hospital or died. Multivariable conditional regression analyses found no evidence of greater odds of hospital admission or death among those with BA.2.75 (odds ratio (OR) = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.84-1.09) and BA.4.6 (OR = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.88- 1.17) or BQ.1 (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.94-1.13) compared to BA.5. Future lineages may not follow the same trend and there remains a need for continued surveillance of COVID-19 variants and their clinical outcomes to inform the public health response.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-COV-2; case-control; epidemiology; genomics; severity.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Epicurves of cases and controls for BA.5, BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BQ.1.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Crude and adjusted odds ratios for admission or death, relative to BA.5 with 95% confidence intervals of BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BQ.1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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