Denmark on Tuesday reported 18 deaths linked to the Omicron coronavirus variant. The deaths occurred between Nov. 21 and Dec. 28, 2021, after the 18 people tested positive for the new virus strain, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
In the same period, the country registered 127,146 coronavirus cases, of which 55,691 were new cases of Omicron, and 100 deaths were attributed to other coronavirus variants, primarily the Delta strain, the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Denmark's top infectious diseases authority, said.
"The risk of being admitted to hospital with Omicron is considered to be about half that of the Delta variant," the Danish news agency Ritzau quoted Tyra Grove Krause, the SSI's academic director, as saying.
"We believe that the Omicron variant will spread rapidly in January and February, infecting a large portion of the population but fortunately leading to a mild course ... aided to a large extent by vaccines," Krause said.
To date, Denmark has registered 57,125 Omicron cases, but this is "only a representative proportion of the samples screened," the SSI said. It estimated that around 90 percent of all positive test samples taken since Dec. 28, 2021, contained the Omicron variant.
In the past 24 hours, the SSI registered 25,073 new infections and 15 new deaths, bringing the national totals to 865,110 cases and 3,307 deaths.
According to the SSI, 78.3 percent of the population, or 4,597,251 people, have been fully vaccinated and 2,903,451 people, or 49.4 percent of the population, have received a booster jab.