Do falling Omicron cases in South Africa offer hope to other countries?

Covid-19 hospitalisations have begun falling in South Africa after a rapid spike last month following the discovery of the Omicron variant.

In what The Telegraph described as “good news for other regions battling the new variant”, the number of people in hospital with coronavirus dropped by 25% to 5,600 last week, according to data released by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg.

The latest figures also show that just “8,515 people tested positive in the past 23 hours, down from 13,992 last Monday”, said the Daily Mail – the biggest drop since the variant hit the country.

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Omicron has “overtaken its predecessor, the Delta variant, to become the most common form of the Covid virus circulating in South Africa”, News24 reported.

But a drop in infections and hospitalisation supports “reports indicating that the new highly mutated variant may not be as severe as other forms of Covid-19”, The Telegraph added.

Precious time

According to Cape Town-headquartered broadcaster News24, the “Omicron wave is not yet near its peak”, with experts voicing fears that it could quickly spread further due to “the fact that South Africa currently has virtually no lockdown restrictions in place”.

It may also be “in between waves”, with Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, adding: “Time is needed to not just get more data from various countries, but also to separate out the possible factors driving the numbers.”

Scientists who have been “hailed for their discovery of Omicron” are also probing a link between the emergence of the new variant and the above average number of South Africans that carry HIV, the BBC reported.

“Researchers have already observed that Covid-19 can linger for many months in patients who are HIV positive,” said the broadcaster. The latest line of enquiry is looking into whether new variants can be linked “to mutations taking place inside infected people whose immune systems have already been weakened” by HIV.

“Two cases of particular interest have now been detected in South African hospitals,” the BBC added, including one woman who “continued to test positive for Covid-19 for almost eight months, earlier this year, while the virus underwent more than 30 genetic shifts”.

‘Light escape’

The latest hospitalisation figures have prompted hope that “the wave is fading”, the Daily Mail said, adding that it has also fed into the “ongoing debate” over whether Omicron “is intrinsically milder or if South Africa is benefiting from very high levels of natural immunity after being battered by Delta just months ago”.

During a Downing Street press conference last week, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, urged caution over claims that the virus is less dangerous than previous strains, stating: “There’s a danger people have over-interpreted this to say, this is not a problem and what are we worrying about?” Huff Post reported.

“The amount of immunity in South Africa for this wave – because of a prior Delta wave and vaccination – is far higher than it was for their last wave,” he added. “Therefore the fact that there is a lower hospitalisation rate is unsurprising.”

Professor Tom Moultrie, a demographer at the University of Cape Town, echoed Whitty’s warning, telling The Telegraph that South Africa’s experience of the Omicron variant may be shaped by the country's “horrendous” pandemic death toll.

The country has so far reported 90,453 deaths and more than three million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University tracking.

Continuing that it “really does seem” as if South Africa “will escape relatively unscathed in this wave”, Moultrie added: “What if South Africa's ‘light escape’ is because we ‘bought’ that present at horrendous cost during past waves?”

Experts have also warned that infection numbers “are likely being skewed by the vast migration of people from Johannesburg and Pretoria back home to rural areas for the festive period”, The Telegraph said.

“The fear is that the mass exodus” could trigger “an explosion of cases elsewhere in southern Africa” over and beyond the Christmas holidays.

The early data emerging from South Africa does appear to suggest that “the country is experiencing a relatively brief wave of milder infections”, said The Observer’s science editor Robin McKie.

“Early indications also suggest that deaths could be lower than they have been for previous waves,” while “health officials have reported that people appear to recover more quickly from Omicron compared with Delta, whether they were in hospital or not”.

But “it remains to be seen whether these figures mean Omicron produces milder illness than previous variants in other countries, including the UK”, he warned.

“It remains a possibility with some scientists expressing quiet optimism.” But “others are more cautious” given the range of factors impacting South Africa’s outbreak.