Covid cases in Omicron-stricken South Africa spiralled almost five-fold in a week today and hospitalisations rocketed more than 360 per cent — as officials warn the R rate in the epicentre may be as high as 3.5.
The country's National Institute for Communicable Diseases recorded another 16,055 Covid cases in the last 24 hours — with the vast majority in epicentre Gauteng province.
This was a jump of 468 per cent on a week ago when 2,828 infections were announced, and up 1,900 per cent on a fortnight ago when just 789 infections were registered.
Hospitalisations also surged after 279 were recorded today, compared to 60 last Friday. And deaths more than doubled after 25 were recorded compared to 12 a week ago.
South Africa is seeing a meteoric rise in its cases amid the rampant spread of the Omicron variant, which scientists say has already reached every province in the country.
Public Health officials in Gauteng — where Johannesburg is based — say their R rate has surged to 3.5 from around one a month ago. It means every ten people infected with the virus are now spreading it to 35 others. In the UK, the R rate has never risen above 1.6.
While Omicron's infectiousness seems unquestionable, there is growing uncertainty about how well it can evade vaccines and how severe the illness it causes will be. A pre-print published in the country found the variant was at least two-and-a-half times better at re-infecting people than all other variants.
Public health experts in South Africa and the WHO have insisted cases are only mild and vaccines should still be highly effective against the strain, despite a lack of data. But UK Health Security Agency epidemiologist Meaghan Kall warns that data currently suggests Omicron may be 'worse' than Delta.
Fears are mounting it is already spreading in the UK after Nicola Sturgeon warned six cases were linked to a Steps concert. Official data suggests the variant may be transmitting in England as the proportion of suspected cases rockets. UK officials have confirmed 59 Omicron cases to date.
Boris Johnson has placed South Africa and a host of other southern African nations on the 'red list' in a bid to slow the variant's 'seeding' in the UK. He has also reimposed face masks in shops, on public transport, and in communal areas of schools in England, and said all close contacts of Omicron cases must self-isolate for ten days.
In South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa is holding a meeting this weekend. The country remains on alert level one, which only requires face masks to be worn in public places and places some limits on large events.
Data in South Africa shows the R-rate has soared to over three per cent in recent weeks as Omicron took hold in Gauteng province
Some 59 cases of Omicron have been confirmed in the UK so far. Twenty-nine infections have been spotted in England, including three in Westminster and two in each of Barnet, Buckinhamshire, Camden, Lewisham and South Northamptonshire. And Scotland's cases today increased by 16 to 29. The first 13 infections were divided between Lanarkshire and the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area, but a Government spokesperson declined to confirm where the 16 new cases were spotted. And Wales announced this afternoon that its first case has been found in Cardiff
NICD data is based on lateral flow and PCR tests done across South Africa every day.
It showed that in the country's nine provinces most new infections were recorded in Gauteng (11,553 new cases), where they surged 431 per cent in a week.
The second-highest number of new infections were recorded in the Western Cape (957 cases, up 588 per cent), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (897 cases, up 730 per cent) and the North West (805 cases, up 594 per cent).
Daily infections are spiralling in South Africa which is now recording almost 7,000 cases a day on average.
But they are rising from a much lower base than in other countries like the UK, where cases today broke through 50,000 a day for the second time in 48 hours.
South Africa's test positivity rate — the number of swabs that detect the virus — is running very high, however, with almost a quarter of all swabs picking up the virus.
This suggests there are many more infections in the communtiy that are not being diagnosed.
In the UK, the positivity rate is around nine per cent.
President Ramaphosa has so far dodged imposing more restrictions, instead mulling over plans to tell nationals to get two doses of the Covid vaccine.
He has insisted that current restrictions are enough to keep the virus at bay despite surging infection rates.
The president is expected to face opposition to further restrictions because of the economic ramifications and a local election campaign in early November that paid scant regard to Covid measures.
Professor Mary-Ann Davies, an infectious disease expert at the University of Cape Town, has called on the Government to get more people vaccinated.
She told local newspaper the Sunday Times: 'The single most important thing we can do is to increase vaccine coverage as rapidly as possible in the most vulnerable groups and this is where energies should be directed, rather than at lockdowns at this stage.'
Some 24 per cent of South Africans have got two doses of the Covid vaccine. In the UK, 67 per cent are double-vaccinated.
South Africa has slammed travel bans imposed by western nations on the country and its neighbours, blasting them as an overreaction.
Tourism bosses have described the wave of booking cancellations that it triggered as a 'nightmare'.
Britain has detected 59
