Leading South African scientists warned that it was too early to determine whether the Omicron variant would cause only mild disease.
Scientists said the exact impact of the coronavirus strain is difficult to determine at present as it has so far affected mostly young people, who are able to fight off the pathogen, and people become ill after carrying the virus for some time. , the scientists said. A presentation to lawmakers on Wednesday.
Earlier the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said the daily number of new confirmed cases in South Africa had nearly doubled to 8,561 in the past 24 hours. omicron Till now there is major tension in the country.
“The latest infections have mostly occurred in younger age groups, but we are starting to see this move in older age groups,” Michelle Grom, head of public health surveillance and response at the NICD, told lawmakers. “We’re also hoping that more serious complications may not present on their own for a few weeks.”
On 25 November, the South African government and scientists announced that a new variant, later named Omicron by the World Health Organization, had been found in the country. This triggered a sell-off in the equity market and imposed travel restrictions on several southern African countries.
Richard Lessells, an infectious disease specialist at the KRISP Genomics Institute, said the severity of the disease caused by the new strain may also be hidden by the fact that many people have already contracted other variants or have been given some immunity. Having been vaccinated.
“If this virus and this type spread through the population very efficiently, it would still be able to find people in the population who are vulnerable and may be vulnerable to serious disease.” “The same thing worries us when we think of the continent more generally.”
South Africa’s vaccination rate is low compared to Western countries and China, but well above most African countries, with about a quarter of the population fully vaccinated. In a continent of 1.3 billion people, only 6.7% have been fully vaccinated, with only 0.1% of the 100 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo receiving their shots.
Still, Lessels hopes that although the variant may evade antibodies, other defenses of the body, such as T-cells, may still be effective. T-cells kill infected cells.
He told lawmakers, “We expect that your protection against serious illness is more difficult to get around like this.” “We don’t expect it to have any effect on the therapeutics we use.”
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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