Despite increased testing, the number of new COVID-19 positive cases reported in South Africa has decreased, showing a downward trend.
According to The Epoch Times, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) recorded 17,154 new cases on Dec. 11, approximately 2,000 less than the 19,018 new cases reported on Dec. 10. This was found after the NICD carried out 104,831 new tests on Dec. 11, an increase of more than 20,000 from the previous day.
For the provincial breakdown, Gauteng accounts for half of all new cases, followed closely by KwaZulu-Natal (15%). There were 9% of new cases in the Western Cape; 7% in the North West; 6% in Mpumalanga; 5% in the Free State; 4% in Eastern Cape; 3% in Limpopo; and 1% in Northern Cape.
According to a tweet from Professor Francois Balloux, the head of University College London Genetics Institute, "The Omicron outbreak in SA [South Africa] with its extraordinary fast rise, and apparently nearly equally fast fall, is one of the most mind-boggling things I've ever seen during my career as an infectious disease epidemiologist."
From 45% on Dec. 10 to 28% on Dec. 11, he saw a "dramatic decrease in test positivity."
Even though there was a rise in the number of people being admitted to the hospital each day between Dec. 8 and Dec. 10, the number significantly decreased from 374 to 184 on Dec. 11.
The Epoch Times, on the other hand, noted that there seems to be a discrepancy between current trends and a pre-print research in the U.K. that aims to estimate the consequences of Omicron variants in England.
According to a press statement from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), co-leader Rosanna Barnard recognized that "there is a lot of uncertainty about the characteristics of Omicron, and whether Omicron in England will follow the same course as it has in South Africa."
The study, which hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, says that results show that Omicron could cause a lot of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in people who have a lot of immunity, like England.
"In our most hopeful scenario, the effect of Omicron in the early part of 2022 would be lessened with minor management measures such as working from home," Barnard said.
She went on to say that "mask-wearing, social distancing, and booster jabs are vital, but may not be enough."
But according to Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, any model "is only as good as its assumptions" when it comes to these predictions.
Hunter said that the U.K. research hypothesized that the severity of Omicron results in the unvaccinated was comparable to Delta clinical outcome in the vaccinated.
"Although we will not know for certain for a few weeks, indications from South Africa do suggest that Omicron does cause less severe disease than Delta, though this is likely to be due to partial immunity," he explained.
Hunter said that there isn't enough data yet to say with any certainty that Omicron mutations would be enough to get around antibodies. Nonetheless, he said that T-cell immunity would be less affected by this.
