I think it’s too early to be sure, but not too early to have some pretty strong suspicions that it’s less severe.

While South Africa is a young country, we can still compare apples to apples by comparing it to South Africa’s Delta wave. While cases are high, Delta had a higher case fatality, hospitalization, and severe outcome rate than Omicron.

I’m fully okay with waiting to get more data before being conclusive, but I think the point estimate is less severe with a wide margin of error.