As the Omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn’t had to send anyone to the hospital.
And that includes older patients and those with health problems that can make them more vulnerable to becoming severely ill from a coronavirus infection, he said.. All caution that it will take many more weeks to collect enough data to be sure, their observations and the early evidence offer some clues.Only about 30 per cent of those hospitalised with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves.
“At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease,” Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, said, citing the national institute’s figures and other reports. “It’s early days, and we need to get the final data. Often hospitalisations and deaths happen later, and we are only two weeks into this wave.”
Pillay is a director of an association representing some 5000 general practitioners across South Africa, and his colleagues have documented similar observations about Omicron. Netcare, the largest private healthcare provider, is also reporting less severe cases of COVID-19.
Hope it stays that way
“Jassat said that even though the early signs are that Omicron cases are less severe, the volume of new COVID-19 cases may still overwhelm South Africa’s hospitals and result in a higher number of severe symptoms and deaths.” The risk of increased exponential transmission.
In the 4th wave that South Africa is undergoing, I believe not all patients are tested for genome sequencing of the virus. Therefore we can not be 100% confident that all 17154 case found are the omicron.