The new study data suggests that the UK variant of COVID-19 does not cause more severe illness among hospitalized patients.

Officially known as B.1.1.7, the variant is known to be more transmissible than the previous strain, and was declared last week by the CDC as the most common type of coronavirus currently circulating in the United States.

“Our data, in the context and limitations of real-world studies, provide initial certainty that the severity of patients hospitalized with B.1.1.7 is not much different from the severity in those who do not, and this study provides a model to answer this. same. more questions as we enter an era of emerging variants, “write the researchers in the study.

Led by researchers at University College London and published yesterday at Lancet Infectious Disease, the investigation monitored 496 patients admitted to two London hospitals between 9 November 2020 and 20 December 2020. Of these 341 patients for whom sequencing data were available, 58% had B.1.1.7.

Although the investigators found an increase in viral load among those with variant B.1.1.7, they found similar rates of severe illness and death in the unadjusted analysis, and the analyzes were adjusted for age, sex, comorbidities, ethnicity and hospitalization. being treated. The investigators did not improve their outcome ratio for receiving treatment.

Patients with the variant strain are often younger, have fewer comorbidities and are more often an ethnic minority. The only significant difference in treatment between the two groups was the more frequent oxygen reception between those with B.1.1.7.

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The investigators note that these findings do not explain whether B.1.1.7 infection in other strains increases the risk of hospitalization. It is possible that the increase in transmission alone could be responsible for the increase in the volume of hospitalizations associated with the variant, they wrote.

The good news about the COVID-19 variant from the UK study came around the same time preliminary data from the Israeli investigation demonstrated that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine protects against variant B.1.351 first identified in South Africa – but not to the extent that it is against B.1.17 or other strains.

These findings, which have not been peer reviewed and should not be used to inform clinical practice, were generated among members of the Clalit Health Service, Israel’s largest health care organization, with documented COVID-19 infection.

Meanwhile, The CDC is out with its own study this week highlighted the higher rates of COVID-19 hospitalization among minority racial and ethnic groups, especially Latinos and Hispanics, compared to white patients in the US. This analysis reviewed administrative discharge data from approximately 300,000 hospitalized patients collected between March 2020 and December 2020.