Small children getting less sick from Omicron; Genetic mutation protects against severe COVID - Reuters

In very young children, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus causes less severe disease than the Delta variant, according to a new study.

After accounting for other risk factors, including medical conditions and socioeconomic circumstances, researchers found children infected during the Omicron surge had a 29% lower risk of emergency department visits, a 67% lower risk of hospitalization, a 68% lower risk of needing intensive care, and a 71% lower risk of needing machines to breathe, compared to children infected with Delta.

However, "because of Omicron's increased transmissibility, the overall number of emergency department visits, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and mechanical ventilator use in children may still be greater" with Omicron than with Delta, according to a report posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review.

When the Delta variant of the coronavirus was prevalent in the United States, recipients of two doses of Moderna's (MRNA.O) mRNA vaccine were less likely to experience a breakthrough infection - and if they did, were slightly less likely to be hospitalized - than recipients of two doses of the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer (PFE.N) and BioNTech , a large study found.

The vaccines protected equally well against death, but the hospitalization rate was 12.7% for infected Moderna recipients and 13.3% for Pfizer/BioNTech recipients.

When the researchers compared 62,584 Moderna recipients to a closely-matched equal-sized group of Pfizer/BioNTech recipients, the risk for breakthrough infection was 15% lower in the Moderna group.