Interesting, a quick Google search on that seems to say the opposite. Do you happen to have a link/source to that?
I don't have a specific link at hand. (Wifey told me about it some time ago. She works in a lab.) I'll have a look tomorrow.
EDIT: My wife couldn't confirm the source, but this
UK data, Table 2 in particular, may be a primary source of the claim. I've included the table below for ease of viewing. Note that the data excludes the January period of high Alpha-variant cases and the July period of high Delta-variant cases.
That said, UK stats have shown a high number of infections in the past few months,
about 90 percent of which are apparently attributable to the Delta variant. However, despite the high numbers of infections,
peaking at 46,125 cases on 20 July of this year--the highest since mid January, the number of deaths has been about 80 per day. Graham Medley, PhD, professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, member of the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), and a leader of the government's Covid modelling group" is
quoted as saying in mid August that, "In the past with that level of infection, we would have seen over 1,000 deaths a day."
IOW, despite the case spike in June-July, the spike didn’t result in anywhere near the same level of hospitalization or deaths as past spikes have. For example, roughly 2,000 COVID cases led to hospitalization in late June, vs. nearly 40,000 in January.
Finally, as this
article in American Society for Microbiology points out, "it is difficult to determine whether Delta is actually making people sicker than previous forms of the virus or if it is simply circulating amongst more vulnerable populations where case numbers are high, vaccination rates are low and increased stress on hospital systems is impacting patient care and disease outcomes." More important, "Research is ongoing to determine if Delta infection is associated with increased hospitalization and death." (I also read
HERE that vaccines provide
better protection against the Delta variant than the Alpha, specifically in lowering the instances of hospitalization.) Meanwhile, the
NZ Ministry of Health suggests states that "Science is telling us that Delta can cause people to develop more serious COVID-19 illness than other variants of the virus," and that "People with a Delta infection are at higher risk of needing hospitalisation."
Certain groups may well react adversely to the Delta variant, and as a result may need hospitalization. But UK statistics suggest that these outcomes are limited to a much smaller number of people than infections from earlier variants indicate.