According to official statistics, the daily Covid hospitalisations of Omicron-stricken South Africa are at their highest since this variant was introduced.
The data showed that 600 admissions had been made in the past 24 hours. This is an increase of 56 percent from Monday. The hospital currently has 6,895 patients.
Cases also jumped by 81 per cent in a week to 23,884, the highest tally in five months.
There was a small glimmer hope that Gauteng’s seven-day average of cases per day would slow down, even though it had been a month since the variant emerged. All other regions saw cases continue to rise.
South Africa has intensified its vaccination program to reduce hospitalizations from the virus. However, it is still not imposing any restrictions. Before the virus hit, South Africa was using face masks almost everywhere.
The country, along with 10 other countries on the UK’s “red” travel list will be taken off the UK’s journey’red’ at 4am tomorrow.
Sajid Javid, UK Health Secretary, told the Commons that the changes were made due to the fact there had already been so much transmission in Britain and it was spreading widely ‘widely throughout the world.
This is the second major study that has been done in South Africa to confirm the existence of this variant in the waves’ epicentre.
The Pfizer vaccine provided 75% protection against Omicron-related hospitalizations and deaths, while Delta only offered 93%.
However, despite growing optimism British officials were warned that Omicron would see a “significant rise” in Omicron hospitalisations in the next weeks. Experts in the UK are worried that Omicron’s population is different to South Africa, making it more vulnerable.
South Africa’s covid cases rose by 81% in one week, with an additional 23,884 being recorded within the past 24 hours.
This graph shows Covid cases per day as they are reported in South Africa’s nine provinces. Gauteng still sees the highest number of Covid cases every day.
The map shows which areas of South Africa are experiencing the fastest growth in variant cases. This map shows that these regions include the Eastern Cape, Free State and Eastern Cape.
Below is a graph showing weekly Covid hospitalisations for South Africa. The graph shows that they are on the rise following an increase in cases, however studies show Omicron to be more mild than Delta.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) publishes daily Covid case, hospitalisations, and death figures for South Africa.
Its latest figures show that cases are still more than quadrupling week-on-week in two of the country’s nine provinces — Free State and the Eastern Cape.
Cases more than doubled week-on-week in five others — North West, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Cape and the Western Cape.
The Limpopo saw the lowest increase, with a rise of 88% over a week. Gauteng was only 21%, however.
The Omicron variant has caused cases to plateau in this region. Today, there were 8685 cases of new infection, as compared with 8,445 the week before.
South Africans already have 25% immunity to the virus.
The announcement came as ministers from UK confirmed that every country will be removed tomorrow from the Government’s international travel redlist. Omicron was already rampant in Britain.
Angola (Botswana), Eswatini; Lesotho; Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia. This decision was made at the Cabinet’s Covid-19 operations committee (Covid O).
Following the Omicron emergence, the red list was reinstated. Ministers wanted to keep cases from being brought into the UK. The red list has been updated to reflect the new variant. However, stricter rules for travel testing will still be in effect.
This afternoon, Mr Javid spoke to MPs: “Now that Omicron is spreading so rapidly around the globe and there has been community transmission in the UK, it is less difficult for the travel red lists to slow down the spread of Omicron.
“So, I am able to announce that while we will continue our temporary testing procedures for international travel, all 11 countries will be removed from the travel redlist, starting at 4am tomorrow morning.
People arriving in the UK from red list countries must currently spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel at a cost of £2,285 for solo travellers.
Ministers will mothball once more the hotel quarantine system after removing all 11 countries.
South Africa’s first Omicron case study was conducted over the past month. The results showed that hospitalization rates were 55% lower than wiuth delta and 39% less than original.
As a crude rate, Omicron is currently leading to a third fewer hospital admissions than Delta did during its entire wave — 38 admissions per 1,000 Omicron cases compared to 101 per 1,000 for Delta.
These results support the theory that this ultra-infectious strain of the virus is more resistant than the previous strains. Doctors on the ground in South Africa claim it for many weeks.
According to South African Medical Research Council, the decrease in severity could not be due to Omicron being intrinsically more milder.
75% of South Africans have already recovered from Covid and 23% are double-vaccinated. This creates high levels of immunity.
This finding raises hopes that Omicron waves in the UK will not be as severe as previous peak levels, even though it has a larger and older population. The UK, however, is distributing booster jabs in large numbers. This contrasts with South Africa.
Omicron patients were examined by officials who compared them to Delta cases (in green), and found that the risk of being hospitalized was five times lower than those with the original Omicron (in dark blue). Omicron in blue and South African’s original ‘Beta’ variant in dark blue are shown. Even though numbers are still low, children had a 22% higher chance of being admitted to hospital with complications in the second wave.
As a crude rate, Omicron is currently causing a third fewer hospital admissions than Delta did during its entire wave — 38 admissions per 1,000 Omicron cases, compared to 101 per 1,000 for Delta
Also, the study found that Pfizer’s Omicron vaccine provides 70% protection against death or hospital admissions. This is in contrast to Delta’s 93%.
For Delta, Pfizer jabs provide over 80 percent protection against symptoms of infection at first. After six months, the number drops to just 60 percent.
The study today, which was co-run with private insurance company Discovery Health and based more than 211,000 positive Covid results between November 15th to December 7, 78,000 were attributable to Omicron.
All told, 4 out 10 positive test subjects had been given two doses Pfizer/BioNTech vaccinations.
Two doses of 70 percent protection against severe diseases still exceed the World Health Organization threshold of 50%.
However, the efficacy of older groups was further reduced by the researchers, with only 59 percent in the 70-79 range, according to the research.
This could be due to the fact that older adults were first vaccinated in the initial rollout, and therefore immunity has had more time to wear off than for younger people.
Protection against admission was consistent across a range of chronic illnesses including diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and other cardiovascular diseases, the study said.
Even though the number of children admitted to hospital with complications was still small, it appeared that they had a 20% greater chance during the fourth wave.
Shirley Collie is chief health analytics officer at Discovery Health.
The Omicron Wave was still the most likely time for children to become positive, but she warned that they were only 51 percent less likely than their peers and there is still a low risk of them becoming positive.