Vaccine expert hopes to reach ‘turning point’ of COVID pandemic
The wave of the new variant of the coronavirus “Omicron” in South Africa “died down” after hitting half of the country’s population. The country is in a “good situation” and has reached a “turning point” in the COVID-19c pandemic, Lead Doctor Professor Shabir Madhi said.
South Africa has reached a “turning point in the pandemic” after the Omicron coronavirus wave in South Africa collapsed completely, said a front-line doctor in Johannesburg. The news came amid growing hopes that the outbreak in other countries will also be short-lived, writes the Daily Mail.
Professor Shabir Madhi, a vaccine expert at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the new variant has “largely died down” in Gauteng, the first province to fall victim to the highly infectious Omicron. He estimates that up to 50 percent of the 58.8 million people in South Africa have contracted Omicron since its inception, despite the fact that since the first detection of the strain on November 23, only 500,000 cases have been reported.
While the number of COVID infections has skyrocketed to “unprecedented” levels, Professor Madhi argues that there is a “complete difference” in terms of hospitalizations and deaths. The numbers show that hospital admissions barely reached a third of previous peaks, while mortality remained 10 times lower than past levels.
Professor Madhi told BBC Radio 4 Today: “I think we are in a good situation in South Africa and I think we have reached a turning point in this pandemic.”
“The hospitalization rate this time is about one-third of what it was during the delta wave, and the mortality rate is about 10% of what it was during the delta wave. So, we are seeing a complete separation of infections and serious illnesses. “
But the expert said that Omicron infection only stabilized and fell after it infected up to half of the population.
This comes after South Africa reported 8,078 more cases on Tuesday, up 12 percent from the week before, after 17 straight days. Officially, on December 15, the number of daily cases of the disease reached almost 27,000.
The number of hospitalizations also increased by 8% (309 cases were registered), however, these numbers have also tended to decrease in the last two weeks. Deaths rose to 139 cases, the highest level since the Omicron wave took off. But they are still far from 600 per day at the peak of the Delta wave.
As the Daily Mail notes, there is growing hope that the outbreak in the UK, caused by various variants of the coronavirus, will follow a similar trajectory: more than 70 percent of Britons received two injections and half of them received three doses of the vaccine.
In London – the epicenter of Omicron in the UK – infections and hospitalizations seem to be steadily declining. On the first day of the new year, when the data were received, 347 people were admitted to hospitals in the capital, which is 7% less than in the previous week. This is the second day in a row that the number of receptions is reduced weekly.
While the number of daily infections in the country is at an all-time high – 218,000 Britons tested positive on Tuesday – the number of COVID patients in hospitals is still only a fraction of previous peaks.
There are now 15,000 COVID patients in the hospital, up from nearly 40,000 in January last year, and fewer patients require ventilation.
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