Omicron scare: WHO deploys team in South Africa
December 03, 2021  08:19
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The World Health Organization has deployed a team of officials to South Africa's Gauteng province, the epicentre of the new Omicron coronavirus variant, for ramping up surveillance measures and contact tracing efforts as the country grapples with rising infections, an official said on Thursday.
 
Some 11,500 new infections were registered in the latest daily figures, a sharp rise from the 8,500 cases confirmed the previous day.
 
In contrast, daily infections were averaging between 200 and 300 in mid-November in the country, health officials said.
 
Omicron, which was first identified in South Africa exactly a week ago, now has been detected in at least 24 countries around the world, according to the WHO.  
 
"We are deploying a surge team in Gauteng province to support surveillance and contact tracing," Dr Salam Gueye, WHO Regional Emergency Director for Africa, said in a media briefing on Thursday, adding that a team is already working in South Africa on genomic sequencing.  
 
The Gauteng province, which is the economic hub of South Africa, has accounted for almost 80 per cent of the infections over the past week.  
 
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said at the same briefing that around 75 per cent of samples tested positive for the new variant.
 
"For the month of November, we had 249 sequences and of those, 183 have been considered to be Omicron," said NICD clinical microbiologist professor Anne von Gottberg. 
 
According to the Africa Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, the continent recorded 52,300 new COVID-19 cases compared to the previous week --- a 105 per cent increase.  
 
WHO's Africa director Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said on Thursday that countries "must adjust their COVID-19 response and stop a surge in cases from sweeping across Africa and possibly overwhelming already-stretched health facilities."
 
Gauteng premier David Makhura confirmed in a separate media briefing that the province was on the cusp of a fourth wave.  
 
"We are monitoring the situation very closely; getting feedback from our clinical teams also on the full impact of this. As we see the (rising) numbers every day, we are very concerned about  it," Makhura said, as he made a plea to residents of the province to step up to get vaccinated.  
 
The premier said that since Monday, there were over 50,000 vaccinations a day from the low of 30,000 daily before the announcement of the new variant.  
 
"If we sustain the daily vaccination of 50,000 throughout this period into the festive season, it will help us to reach at least another half a million people before they leave Gauteng," he said.  
 
Makhura was referring to the annual exodus to rural areas outside the province by workers in Gauteng as business and industry shuts down from mid-December for several weeks until early in the new year. 
 
"We need to catch people here in Gauteng and vaccinate them because we know that during the festive season millions of people leave our province. We don't want people to be carrying this variant to other provinces, especially those who are not vaccinated," he explained. -- PTI
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