Covid-19 hospitalizations are rapidly rising in a populous South African province where the new omicron variant has been detected.
Hospitalizations across the country have increased 63 percent since the beginning of November, according to data from the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. In Gauteng, a province that includes the nation’s largest city, Johannesburg, hospitalizations are up nearly 400 percent since the beginning of the month, from 120 for the week ending Nov. 6 to 580 for the week ending Saturday.
South Africa’s NICD, part of the group of researchers and government institutions that first reported the variant to the World Health Organization, said in a statement that omicron cases were found in Gauteng at “a relatively high frequency.”
In a statement Sunday, the WHO cautioned against drawing conclusions about a link between the omicron variant and the increase in hospitalizations.
South Africa has vaccinated about 28 percent of its 60 million residents with at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, according to data collected by Our World in Data. As a whole, African countries have vaccinated about 10 percent of their population, compared with 64 percent in North America.
The WHO labeled omicron a “variant of concern” Friday, and on Monday, it said the variant poses a “very high” risk to the world. In the wake of the news of the variant, multiple countries have issued bans on travel from southern African nations, bans that the WHO has criticized.
The variant was first detected in Botswana. Since then, it has been identified in other countries, including Israel and Canada.
According to the data, no other province in South Africa has seen more than a doubling of hospitalizations in November. Fewer than half of the country’s nine provinces have seen any increase in recent weeks.
There have been 29,373 cases and 219 deaths reported in South Africa in the previous seven days, according to an analysis of data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Deaths have increased compared with the previous seven-day period, and cases are up as well. Adjusted for population, South Africa’s recent case rate ranks it among the half of countries with the highest rates.
Since the start of the pandemic, South Africa has reported 2,963,679 cases and 89,822 deaths.
Monica Hersher contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
