Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Can you advise what the data source is for the ‘50% more pathogenic than the original virus’ statement is?

There are various ways of calcuating it. Following figures are all in the immune naive:

Risk of hospitalisation with Omicron reduced 41% vs Delta. But Delta vs Alpha increased risk 52%. And Alpha vs wild type increased risk 62%. = Net +51%

Sources:

Omicron: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-50-severity-omicron/
Delta: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00475-8/fulltext#sec1
Wild: https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4662827/

You can use different sources for hospitilisation rates and different methods to calculate this. The range of results is Omicron being anything from 13% more likely to hospitalise than wild all the way up to twice as much. 51% is the figure you arrive at if you use only UK sources.