Medical experts say that the number of new COVID-19 cases in South Africa has dropped significantly in recent days, which may indicate that the country’s dramatic surge driven by omicron has passed its peak.

It is well known that the daily number of virus cases is unreliable because they may be affected by uneven testing, delayed reporting, and other fluctuations. But they provided a tantalizing hint—far from conclusive—that omicron infections might subside quickly after a violent spike.

South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave, and the world is paying attention to any signs of how it might function in an attempt to understand what might happen.

After the country’s new cases reached a high of nearly 27,000 on Thursday, the number fell to approximately 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng—South Africa’s most populous province with 16 million people, including the largest city Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria—this decline started earlier and continues.

“The decline in new cases across the country, coupled with the continued decline in new cases in Gauteng, has been at the center of this wave for several weeks, which shows that we have passed the peak period,” said Marta Noone, senior researcher in vaccines and vaccines. Said (Marta Nunes). The Department of Infectious Disease Analysis at Witwatersrand University told the Associated Press.

“This is a short wave… The good news is that the situation is not very serious in terms of hospitalizations and deaths,” she said. “In epidemiology, there was a sharp increase as we saw in November, and then a sharp decline, which is not unexpected in epidemiology.”

The figure in Gauteng began to rise sharply in mid-November. Scientists performing gene sequencing quickly identified the new, highly mutated omicron variant announced to the world on November 25th.

omicron was significantly more communicable and soon became dominant in South Africa. According to tests, since mid-November, it is estimated that 90% of COVID-19 cases in Gauteng are omicron.

The world seems to be following up quickly, and omicron has surpassed the delta variant to become the main strain of coronavirus in some countries. Health officials say that in the United States, omicron accounted for 73% of new infections last week — and this variant is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, Southeastern, Industrial Midwest, and Pacific Northwest.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK surged by 60% within a week, as omicron replaced delta as the main variant there. According to data from the World Health Organization, at least 89 countries/regions have found this variation worldwide.

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In South Africa, experts are worried that the sheer number of new infections will overwhelm the country’s hospitals, although omicron seems to cause milder disease, and the number of hospitalizations, patients requiring oxygen and the number of deaths have decreased significantly.

But then the number of cases in Gauteng province began to decline. After reaching 16,000 new infections on December 12, the number of cases in the province has steadily declined, falling to more than 3,300 on Tuesday.

“This is very important. Very important,” Dr. Farid Abdullah said of the decline.
Abdullah, who works in the COVID-19 ward of the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria, said: “The rapid increase in new cases followed a rapid decline. We seem to see the beginning of this decline.”

In another sign that the surge in omicrons in South Africa may be fading, a study of healthcare professionals who tested positive for COVID-19 at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto showed a rapid increase in cases and then a rapid decline.

“Two weeks ago, we saw more than 20 new cases every day, and now there are about five or six cases every day,” Nunes said.

However, she said that it is still too early, and there are several factors that must be closely watched.

She said that the positive rate in South Africa has remained high at 29%, higher than the 2% in early November, indicating that the virus is still spreading at a relatively high level among the population.

The country’s holidays are now underway, many businesses are closed for a month, and people often visit relatives in rural areas. Experts say this may accelerate the spread of omicron in South Africa and neighboring countries.

Professor Veronica Uekermann, head of the COVID-19 response team at Steve Biko Academic Hospital, said: “In terms of the massive daily doubling that we saw a week ago, this seems to have been resolved.”

“But it is too early to say that we have passed the peak. There are too many external factors, including exercise during the holiday and general behavior during this time,” she said, noting that the number of infections surged last year after the holiday break.

South Africa is in the summer and many gatherings are outdoors. This may be different from the wave driven by omicron here and the wave in Europe and North America, where people tend to gather indoors.

Another unknown factor is how much omicron has spread among South Africans without causing disease.

Some health officials in New York said that since South Africa appears to be experiencing a rapid and mild wave of omicron, the variant may behave similarly to other parts of the United States, but Nunes warned against rushing to these conclusions.

“Every environment and every country is different. The population is different. According to demographic statistics, the immunity of different countries is different,” she said. For example, the average age of the population in South Africa is 27 years old, which is younger than many Western countries.

Uekermann emphasized that most patients currently receiving COVID-19 treatment in hospitals are not vaccinated. Approximately 40% of adult South Africans received two doses of the vaccine.

“All of my patients in the ICU are not vaccinated,” Uekermann said. “So our vaccinated people must have done a better job in this wave of epidemic. We have some severely ill COVID patients, and these patients are unvaccinated patients.”