An English study shows that the variants of the coronavirus do not all cause the same symptoms or with the same frequency.
Each variant has its symptoms. The pandemic has evolved a lot since its beginning because of the variants of the coronavirus which have followed one another for two years. The different epidemic waves caused by Alpha, Delta and now Omicron have been different than the first wave in March 2020, depending on the characteristics of each variant: more virulent, more contagious, more difficult to control by antibodies… And these differences are not not only epidemic (causing more or less cases or deaths) but also individual, with symptoms that vary depending on the variant, according to a study by Imperial College London (United Kingdom), posted online in (not yet peer-reviewed) on May 23, 2022.
Variants cause more and more symptoms
The researchers used data from the epidemiological study (for REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission or real-time assessment of the transmission of the coronavirus in the community). This study from the English Health Service (NHS) randomly recruits around 100,000 adult participants every month across England, sending them PCR tests and asking them about possible symptoms, in order to determine the number of people infected. at one point. Participants answer questions and take the swab before mailing the PCR test, so they describe their symptoms before they know whether their tests are positive or not. More than one and a half million people have taken part since May 2020, of which around 17,000 were infected at the time of the test with the original strain of the coronavirus or one of the variants: Alpha, Delta, Omicron BA.1 and Omicron BA.2.
First interesting result: the proportion of asymptomatic patients has been increasingly low since the start of the pandemic. Just under half of people infected with the original strain (45%) reported at least one of the 26 symptoms associated with Covid. This proportion has risen[…]
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