omicron: hospitalisation increase slower than huge spike in cases
While the omicron Covid variant is ripping across South Africa like wildfire – with an exponential increase in infections – there are early indications the vaccines are working, health officials said on Thursday. Dr Mary Kawonga, member of the Gauteng premier’s advisory committee on Covid, noted that hospitalisations had increased, but at a much lower rate than the number of cases and also at a much lower rate than in the third wave.
“During the third wave, when Gauteng recorded 9 000 cases per week, we recorded 5 778 new admissions per week. “The percentage of people between ages 20 to 39 in our hospitals is 43%. We have seen a reduction in the percentage of older people , which went down from 57% to 24%. This makes us believe the vaccines are working, especially because the elderly have higher vaccination coverage than people under the age of thirty,” she said.
“It shall also be a clinical decision and clinical risk mitigation-based decision,” he said. Member of Gauteng premier’s committee Professor Bruce Mellado said the committee observed levels of acceleration that they“This means that we have to recalibrate all our models. We are faced with a similar situation as we were in the third wave, where we started slow and then the delta came in, which was more transmissible than the variant before it, and then we had a strong acceleration from delta.
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