SARS-CoV-2 Alpha Variant: is It Really More Deadly? A Population-Level Observational Study.

AbstractBackgroundIn 2021 a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, which came to be called the alpha variant, spread around the world. There were conflicting reports on this COVID-19 variant strain’s potentially increased lethality. In Israel, this strain became predominant in a very short time period.MethodsCOVID-19 mortality and case fatality rates were examined in Israel in terms of weekly and cumulative numbers.ResultsCOVID-19 case fatality rates in Israel rose quickly at the beginning of the pandemic and peaked in May 2020. The highest crude mortality came later in the second and third waves, but case the case fatality rates did not rise in 2021 with the increasing dominance of the alpha variant.ConclusionsBased on the results of examining case-fatality and mortality rates, we concluded that while the alpha variant of the virus raised mortality, in line with the fact that it is more infectious than wild-type, once this strain was caught by patients in Israel, it was not more likely to kill them than the original strain