The new COVID-19 variant omicron results in an 80% lower hospitalization risk than the delta strain, a study from South Africa has found.

Scientists, doctors and vaccine-makers have been keen to get data on omicron, which has swept across the world after first being identified in South Africa last month.

The new study released on Wednesday analyzed the data from coronavirus infections in South Africa till the end of November.

The findings suggest that omicron, despite being highly contagious, is likely to cause a milder disease than previous variants.

"The very encouraging data point strongly to a substantially lower severity in the omicron wave," said Cheryl Cohen of South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), which examined the data along with other institutions in the country.

In addition to the lower chances of hospitalization, omicron infections "were associated with a 70% lower odds of severe disease in relation to delta infections."

The authors caution they only looked at infections in South Africa and that different populations could respond differently.

One potentially critical difference is that South Africa's population may have a high level of prior exposure to the coronavirus. If so, then the natural immunity could be helping to blunt omicron's force.