Covid chaos in South Africa as country finds 19,000 unrecorded cases making a record 37,000 new infections added today and leaving public clueless as to whether Omicron wave has peaked or not – and even the PRESIDENT has tested positive
- The National Institute for Communicable Diseases revealed the mix-up today
- South Africa confirmed 18,035 new cases of Covid in the past 24 hours
- But the total was bumped up to more than 37,000 including retrospective cases
- The NICD blamed the gaffe on ‘IT challenges’ and warned of more positive tests
- It comes as President Cyril Ramaphosa, 69, tested positive for the virus today
South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) today announced more than 19,000 positive Covid tests had previously gone unreported due to ‘IT challenges’.
South Africa confirmed 18,035 new cases of Covid in the past 24 hours, but the total was bumped up to more than 37,000 to account for the positive tests not previously reported.
‘Today we report 37,875 new cases, which includes 19,840 retrospective cases & 18,035 new cases,’ the NICD said in a statement today, before calling out public laboratories it said were to blame for the unreported tests.
‘For the NICD to report quality and comprehensive data, the institute relies on test reports from both private and public laboratories to generate daily COVID-19 statistics.
‘The NICD was informed in the previous week that information technology (IT) challenges had been experienced by public sector laboratories, which have resulted in reporting delays.’
It comes as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tested positive for the virus today despite being fully vaccinated.
A member of the Western Cape Metro Emergency Medical Services vaccinates a woman, who cannot walk, in a car at a COVID 19 vaccination event in Manenberg on December 08, 2021 in Cape Town.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tested positive for Covid today despite being fully vaccinated (pictured August 27, 2021)
Ramaphosa, 69, started feeling unwell and a test confirmed COVID-19, a statement from the presidency announced earlier today.
He is self-isolating in Cape Town and is being monitored by the South African Military Health Service, having delegated all responsibilities to Deputy President David Mabuza for the next week.
The statement didn’t say whether he had been infected with the omicron coronavirus variant, but confirmed he was experiencing ‘mild’ symptoms and is being treated.
Ramaphosa said his own infection serves as a caution to all people in South Africa to be vaccinated and remain vigilant against exposure, a governmental statement said.
The NICD also said there may be further revelations of unreported Covid cases in South Africa in the coming days due to data taking ‘longer to reflect’.
‘Some COVID-19 surveillance data may take longer to reflect on the national line list,’ the institute said.
‘We are committed to transparent reporting and will continue to update COVID-19 surveillance databases retrospectively as the impacted public laboratories remedy the existing IT difficulties.’
The news comes as a devastating blow to South African health authorities who said yesterday the spread of Covid and the new variant Omicron had slowed, while experts were positive about the relatively low rate of hospitalisations.
Shabir Madhi, a professor of Vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said that the infection rate had been much faster than any of the country’s previous three waves, but hospitalisations were remaining low relative to the number of cases.
‘Three weeks into resurgence, many adults and children testing SARS-CoV-2 [positive] in hospital, but COVID hospitalisation remains low relative to community case rate,’ he wrote on Friday.
He also said the death rate was low compared to when similar number of cases were being seen in previous waves.
Using South Africa’s Gauteng province – its Omicron ground-zero – as an example, he said the likely explanation of the low death rate was that 73 percent the region’s population was either vaccinated or previously infected, giving T-cell immunity. The majority of those hospitalised with severe Covid, he said, are vaccinated.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa sits beside Elita de Klerk, widow of former President FW de Klerk at the state memorial service in Cape Town, South Africa, today, December 12. He tested positive for Covid shortly after
‘Government response correctly remains measured by not increasing restrictions and not panicking with increase in cases, but seem to rather focusing on COVID (excluding coincidental Ix) hospitalisation and health facility capacity,’ he said.
After a period of low transmission of about 200 new cases per day in early November, South Africa COVID-19 cases began rising dramatically.
Omicron appears to be highly transmissible and has quickly become dominant in the country, but the majority of cases appear to be relatively mild and the percentage of severe cases needing oxygen have been low, say doctors.
Meanwhile, researches in Israel announced today that a third booster jab of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine provides significant protection against the new Omicron variant.
Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba Medical Centre in Israel
The study, carried out by Sheba Medical Centre and the Health Ministry’s Central Virology Laboratory, compared the blood of 20 people who had received two vaccine doses 5-6 months earlier to the same number of individuals who had received a booster a month before.
Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba, said: ‘People who received the second dose 5 or 6 months ago do not have any neutralisation ability against the Omicron. While they do have some against the Delta strain.
‘The good news is that with the booster dose it increases about a hundred fold. There is a significant protection of the booster dose.’
But Regev-Yochay also admitted that the booster is still less effective in protecting against Omicron versus the Delta variant.
‘It is lower than the neutralisation ability against the Delta, about four times lower,’ she said.
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