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On Dec. 13, 2021, multiple reputable news organizations reported that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at least one person who tested positive with a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, called omicron, in the United Kingdom had died. If true, that fatality would mark the first publicly-documented fatality involving the coronavirus strain. Johnson reportedly made the comment while visiting a vaccination clinic in west London. The BBC published around 1 p.m. (EST): Snopes reached out to Johnson's communication team asking for more information about the purported fatality, including whether the person had underlying health conditions and where they died. We have not received answers to those questions, but we will update this report when, or if, that changes. Next, Snopes contacted Public Health England to see if its coronavirus data substantiated Johnson's remark. A spokesperson referred us to a government web page in which the UK Health Security Agency said of omicron infections so far: One individual diagnosed in hospital has sadly died. Considering that evidence, we rated this claim False — it was erroneous to say no one who tested positive for omicron had died, as of Dec. 13. (Given that the original claim was that no one had died, we subsequently revised this rating to Outdated.) Weeks earlier, on Nov. 26, the world's first cases were popping up in countries such as China, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and the World Health Organization (WHO) dubbed the strain a variant of concern because of its contagiousness. But none of those cases resulted in death according to statistics available to public health officials at the time. In an email to Snopes on Dec. 10, a WHO spokesperson wrote: For Omicron, we have not had any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of disease and this may change. After Johnson's remark on Dec. 13, Snopes contacted the international agency again. To that inquiry, the spokesperson said the agency does not disaggregate deaths reports by coronavirus variant. In other words, the WHO publicly reports deaths among people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 no matter the strain (see the agency's dashboard here) and it did not categorize death certificates based on who tested positive for what variant. That email continued: Put another way, if any coronavirus patient who was infected by the strain had indeed died in, or before, Johnson's remark on Dec. 13, it would take days — if not weeks — for medical examiners, doctors, and health officials to definitively conclude that the variant led to their death, and then more time to update public reporting systems accordingly. The same goes for hospitalizations linked to the strain. Dr. Susan Hopkins, of the UK Health Security Agency's, said of the reporting delay in a statement on Dec. 13: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the omicron was likely spreading more easily than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus — though it's transmissibility compared to its its precursor, the delta variant, remained unknown. But early studies indicated the strain may cause less severe COVID-19 symptoms compared to, the delta variant. Speaking to The Associated Press (AP) for an interview that published Dec. 8., CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, in the U.S. alone, more than 40 people were infected by the coronavirus strain so far, and more than three-quarters of them were vaccinated against COVID-19. She said the disease is mild in almost all of those detected cases, with reported symptoms mainly cough, congestion, and fatigue. As of Dec. 13, the CDC stated on its website that more data are needed to know if omicron infections cause more severe illness or death than infection with other variants. Even though very limited data exists to show omicron's toll, public health officials say COVID-19 vaccinations are communities' best defense to prevent the variant's spread and keep emergency health care systems functioning efficiently. As the University of Missouri Health Care explains on its website: As of Dec. 18, the number of omicron deaths reported by the UK Health Security Agency had risen to 14. (Note: This fact check will no longer be updated.)
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