Omicron cases drop in South Africa, signaling to the end of this wave

Omicron cases in South Africa sees a noticeable drop in recent days may signal that the country’s dramatic Omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say. South Africa is at the forefront of the Omicron wave, and the world is eagerly watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store for the future.  

After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on December 12, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on December 17. In Gauteng province of South Africa’s, one of the most populous provinces of South Africa with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria, noticed the decrease, which started earlier has continued. 

“The dropping of new cases nationally combined with the sustained drop in new cases seen here in Gauteng province, which for weeks has been the center of this wave, indicates that we had almost passed the peak,” mentioned Marta Nunes, senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics department of the University of Witwatersrand.  

“It was a short wave, and the good news is that it was not very severe in terms of deaths and hospitalization,” she said. It is “not unexpected very steep increase, like what we saw in November, is followed by a steep decrease.” 

Being more transmissible, Omicron quickly achieved dominance in South Africa. According to tests, an estimated 90% of COVID-19 cases in Gauteng province since mid-November have been Omicron. The whole world seems to be quickly following, with Omicron already surpassing the delta variant as the dominant coronavirus strain in many countries. 

In the USA, Omicron accounted for 73% of new infections last week, as mentioned by the health officials. The variant is responsible for almost 90% of new conditions in the New York area, the Southeast, the Midwest Pacific Northwest and the industrial Midwest. In South Africa, experts worried that the increase in new infections would overwhelm the country’s hospitals.

Even though Omicron appears to cause milder disease, with significantly fewer hospitalizations, patients needing oxygen and deaths. But then cases in Gauteng started falling from 16,000 new infections on December 12, the province’s numbers have steadily dropped to just over 3,300 on December 17.  South Africa’s positivity rate has increased to 29% from just 2% in early November, indicating the virus is still transmitting among the population at relatively higher rates.

The country’s holiday season started when many businesses closed down for a month, and people travelled to visit their families, often in rural areas. This could generate Omicron’s spread across South Africa and to neighboring countries.  

Health officials in New York have suggested that because South Africa appears to have experienced a quick, mild wave of Omicron, that doesn’t mean the variant may behave similarly everywhere and also in the USA. But Nunes warns against jumping to those conclusions. “Each country is different, and each setting is different, the populations are different. The population’s demographics, the immunity is different in different countries,” she said.

With an average age of 27, South Africa’s population is more youthful than many Western countries, for instance.