Expert: More SA children in hospital amid Covid resurgence
Admissions have increased across South African hospitals amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
The latest alarming increases are believed to be driven by the Omicron variant, first detected in SA less than two weeks ago.
This week, cases have almost doubled each day with over 8 000 cases recorded on Wednesday.
Clinical microbiologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), Anne von Gottberg, believes the country is likely to top 10 000 new cases by Thursday.
Gauteng remains a major concern.
“For the month of November, we have 249 sequences from the network of sequencing laboratories in South Africa but of those, 183 have been confirmed to be Omicron. That’s 75% of the current sequences that we have,” Von Gottberg said at a WHO media briefing.
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“It does look like there is a predominance of Omicron in the country and Omicron has been identified, through sequencing, in at least five of our provinces and we think on the other provinces we are not identifying it yet because we don’t have specimens that have been sequenced.
“We believe that the number of cases will increase exponentially in all provinces across the country.”
Von Gottberg added data shows there is a higher rate of reinfection compared to previous variants, including Beta and Delta.
But health experts are optimistic the disease this time around will be less severe.
“The same would hold for those that are vaccinated. I believe that would be good news, it would be good for us in South Africa, in Africa and globally if those that have had a previous infection of those that are vaccinated have less severe disease due to Omicron.”
According to Von Gottberg, hospitals have also recorded an increase in hospital admissions among children.
“All the data has shown that children have a less severe clinical course and we’ve had some anecdotal reports from hospitals in South Africa that yes, they are seeing a few more children at hospitals and are admitting them and many of them have an uncomplicated clinical course in the few days that they are admitted,” Von Gottberg explained.
“A lot of it is anecdotal. Some of it is becoming more systematic and I think we need to be patient to allow for the ongoing analysis.”
