Nelson Mail

Omicron could be less deadly than influenza

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Influenza in NewZealand may be more deadly in individual­s than Omicron, but only because of howhighly vaccinated the population is against Covid-19, experts say. That’s not to say Covid poses less of a threat than flu. As the newvirus is more transmissi­ble than influenza, it poses a greater threat across the entire population. There are plenty more caveats too: Covid continues to evolve, and the creeping concern of its long tail of chronic illness, mean at this point in time the virus remains a much bigger public health risk. A blog authored by the University of Otago’s Dr Jennifer Summers, Professor Michael Baker and Professor Nick Wilson, estimated that Covid’s infection fatality rate (IFR) could be about 0.03%. The trio based this on the number of people who have died with Covid – at the time of the blog’s publicatio­n 826 – divided by 50% of the population, a measure the US believes to be an accurate representa­tion of howmuch of its population have been infected. A previous estimate of seasonal influenza’s IFR put it at 0.039%, which means seasonal flu may be more deadly than Covid.

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