South Africa has passed the peak of the recent resurgence of positive Covid-19 cases, say the country’s medical experts.
“We seem to have just passed the peak of this recent resurgence we’ve been having in South Africa and as we move into the winter season,” said the NICD head of the Centre for Respiratory Disease and Meningitis, Professor Cheryl Cohen.
Cohen, while presenting graphs of the number of confirmed cases during each wave of the virus, explained that with the Omicron variant, the number of cases did not come down as low as the levels seem with other waves.
“It sort of carried on going and we think part of that is because Omicron itself is not just one variant but there are a whole lot of sub-variants in the Omicron family, and some of these variants have immune-escape,” Cohen said.
The original Omicron variant was BA.1 and the most recent resurgence was associated with another sub-variant called BA.4 and BA.5.
Cohen said it was reassuring that the numbers had started to go down; there was a 27.9% decrease in new cases detected since last week.
“In all provinces, this last resurgence was at a much lower level than we’ve seen in the previous waves. In fact, in all provinces we are seeing a reduction in cases, except in the Northern Cape as cases are still going up. I think that was just because it was lagging behind.”
She said the highest number of cases were in the elderly (over 80 years old) and 40- to 59-year-olds. That was largely reflective as most of the people who were tested were ill and the disease was more severe in older age groups.
“While the testing rate has gone up more recently, it hasn’t gone to a very high level. I think we are seeing some fatigue in terms of people presenting themselves for testing, especially if they have mild illness.”
Cohen said people had access to PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests that could be done at home and thus the number may not be reported as consistently.
She said it was important to note that the total number of cases seen on the NICD’s database did not reflect all the cases in the population.
“In the BA.1 variant, we saw a disconnect between cases and hospitalisations, with hospitalisations being much lower. We see this even more with the recent resurgence. We can see hospitalisations came up to a much lower peak than the previous waves. This is likely because many people who have been vaccinated or have previous infection are giving them immunity, meaning that they are much less likely to die or get admitted to hospital.”
Cohen said the variant was not completely benign as there were people who were hospitalised or died because of it. However, the magnitude was much lower than during the first three waves.
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