(ANSA) – JOHANNESBURG, DEC 31 – South Africa, where the new variant of Covid-19 was detected last month, has announced that it has passed the peak of the Omicron wave without a significant increase in the number of deaths.
“All the indicators suggest that the country has probably passed the peak of the fourth wave” of the pandemic, the presidency said in a statement that also announces the lifting of some health restrictions, in particular the night curfew.
“A marginal increase in the number of deaths was observed in all provinces,” it is explained. New contaminations fell by almost 30% last week (89,781), compared to the previous week (127,753). And hospital admissions fell in eight out of nine provinces. “Although the Omicron variant is highly transmissible, hospitalization rates have been lower than in previous waves,” the presidency said.
Omicron, with a high number of mutations raising concerns about vaccine resistance, was first identified in Botswana and South Africa in late November. It quickly became dominant in South Africa, causing the number of infections to rise exponentially to more than 26,000 cases per day in mid-December, according to official statistics. The variant is currently present in about 100 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Extremely contagious, it also affects people who are vaccinated or who have already been infected with the virus.
The African country officially most affected, South Africa has more than 3.4 million cases and 91,000 deaths from Covid-19. Less than 13,000 cases have been detected in the past 24 hours. (HANDLE).
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Source From: Ansa
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