The figures suggest that South Africa may have already passed the peak of a fourth wave that grew rapidly at first.
The cases of the wave of covid-19 infections driven by omicron in South Africa, the first country to give the alert about this new variant, continue to decline rapidly, as well as the rate of positivity of the tests carried out, health sources reported.
According to the latest data provided by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NICD), the total of new infections this week fell below 10,000 daily and the positivity of the diagnostic tests made it below 25%.
Specifically, this Tuesday (last count available for the moment) South Africa registered a total of 7,216 new infections and the rate of positive tests – an indicator that experts consider more indicative than the cases recorded – was 23.6%.
These figures are already far from the records of infections that were seen in the middle of the month -South Africa approached 27,000 per day for a population of about 58 million inhabitants-, with days in which around 1 in 3 tests carried out confirmed the infection of covid-19.
“The weekly average (of positivity) is 26.8% today, which is lower than yesterday (27.4%),” said the NICD in a statement published late on Tuesday, confirming the downward trend of pandemic indicators.
The figures suggest that South Africa may have already passed the peak of a fourth wave that grew rapidly at first, but is descending at a similar speed.
Researcher Ridhwaan Suliman, a mathematician at the South African Scientific and Industrial Research Council, said late on Tuesday via Twitter that the peak of the national wave driven by omicron had 17% more infections than that of the wave of the delta variant that the country lived in the middle of this year.
Hospitalizations, however, currently remain at 60% of the total seen with delta and deaths remain at just 16%, according to Suliman’s calculations.
NICD specialists had already been optimistic about the decline of the wave last week, although they warned that the Christmas holidays they could mean that fewer people come for diagnostic tests.
South Africa, with 3.4 million accumulated cases to date and close to 91,000 deaths, remains the great epicenter of the pandemic in africa.
Vaccination progress is slow and only 27% of the total population has the complete schedule.
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