Is it still too early to tell whether to fear Omicron, or to embrace it as the end game of COVID-19? Public-health officials may want to take it slow, but the data thus far has both the World Health Organization and the European Union signaling “signs of hope.” Omicron has a dramatic transmission rate and seems to be punching through some vaccinations, but it’s also not doing much damage, WHO announced this morning:

The World Health Organization said Thursday that preliminary data indicates hospitalizations in South Africa remain low, offering “signs of hope,” despite the fact that the omicron variant is spreading rapidly and weekly COVID-19 cases on the African continent have surged by 93%.

In the week ending on Dec. 5, southern Africa recorded a 140% hike in COVID-19 cases, the highest of any region on the continent for that period, mainly driven by an uptick in South Africa, according to the WHO. While researchers are still working to determine whether omicron is fueling the surge, the WHO said that emerging data from South Africa indicates the new variant may cause less severe illness. Data on COVID-19 hospitalizations across South Africa between Nov. 14 and Dec. 4 show that intensive care unit occupancy was only 6.3%, which the WHO said is very low compared with the same period when the country was facing the peak linked to the delta variant in July.

Furthermore, data from the same two-week period from one of the South African health districts most impacted by omicron show that out of more than 1,200 hospital admissions related to COVID-19, there were 98 patients receiving supplemental oxygen and only four on ventilators. The WHO cautioned that the data is “very preliminary with a small sample size and most of the people admitted to the health facilities were under the age of 40.”

Fair point, but it’s also worth noting that seniors in South Africa have a higher vaccination rate, too. That might suggest that vaccinations either prevent Omicron infections or mitigate them to the point where people don’t know they’ve contracted it.

The EU’s equivalent to the American CDC now also reports that their identified Omicron cases have been “mostly mild”:

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Thursday that cases of Omicron so far appear to be “mostly mild”, but cautioned it was still investigating whether the variant could cause severe disease.

“Cases appear to be mostly mild, however we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by Omicron is different (to) that of all the variants that have been circulating so far,” said Marco Cavaleri, EMA’s head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy.

These are still early days, of course, and there are also other considerations than just acutely severe COVID-19 cases. This virus has some long-term consequences that are not yet fully understood, and some data suggests that the risk of “long COVID” isn’t necessarily tied to severely acute presentations. Until that gets better understood, the rapid transmission of any COVID-19 variant will remain a serious concern for public health, if not an emergency.

However. At this point in the Alpha (Wuhan) and Delta variants, we not only saw rapid transmission but large-scale increases in hospitalizations and deaths. We now know Omicron has been circulating for several weeks, especially in Africa but also in Europe and possibly the US. Instead of the usual trailing indicators of hospitalizations and deaths, we’ve actually seen … nothing out of the ordinary. Even the limited number of hospitalizations appear to be correlative rather than causative, as the diagnoses of Omicron infection are coincidental to the reasons for hospitalization.

In fact, thus far there has not been a corroborated report of a single death from an acute Omicron infection. That’s likely to happen at some point, but it’s looking more and more like that will be a very rare outcome indeed. Of course at this rate of transmission, even rare outcomes will add up, as former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams pointed out on Monday:

Been asked about #omicron being less severe. We simply don’t know yet. But substantially ⬆️ transmission can cancel out ⬇️ severity.

1 million infected x 1% death rate is 10,000 dead.

5 million infected x 0.5% death rate is 25,000 dead.

Less severe can still = big impact.

— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) December 5, 2021

We’re getting around to recognizing “less severe.” And we can’t know the fatality rate until we know that this variant is fatal, either. But even if Omicron instantly surpassed Delta in the US and ran through the unvaccinated and lower-immune-response communities, that could be around 60-70 million infections. If the death rate turned out to be even as low as 0.01%, that could still cause around 60-70,000 deaths. Clearly that would be more manageable than the deaths from the other variants, but it’s still significant and would still require some defenses — especially universal uptake of vaccines.

Overall, the news is good so far on Omicron– emphasis on so far. If it turns out to be entirely non-fatal, even better; it could end the pandemic by promoting immune responses in the entire population, rendering COVID a seasonal aggravation rather than an ongoing crisis. We’re not there yet, but for now we have reasons to watch this variant with more hope than we have with any other.