In S. Africa’s plight, a peek at future
Threats abound as omicron rises there and delta still rages
JOHANNESBURG — Dr. Sikhulile Moyo was analyzing COVID-19 samples in his lab in Botswana last week when he noticed they looked startlingly different from others.
Within days, the world was ablaze with the news that the coronavirus had a new variant of concern — one that appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa and offering a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed.
New COVID-19 cases in South Africa have jumped from about 200 a day in mid-november to more than 16,000 on Friday. Omicron was detected over a week ago in the country’s most populous province, Gauteng, and has since spread to all eight other provinces, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said.
Even with the rapid increase, infections are still below the 25,000 new daily cases that South Africa reported in the previous surge, in June and July.
Little is known about the new variant, but the spike in South Africa suggests it might be more contagious, said Moyo, the scientist who may have been the first to identify the new variant, though researchers in neighboring South Africa were close on his heels.
Omicron has more than 50 mutations, and scientists have called it a big jump in the evolution of the virus.
It’s not clear if the variant causes more serious illness or can evade the protection of vaccines.
Phaahla noted that only a small number of people who have been vaccinated have gotten sick, mostly with mild cases, while the vast majority of those who have been hospitalized were not vaccinated.
But in a worrisome development, South African scientists reported that omicron appears more likely than earlier variants to cause reinfections among people who have already had a bout with COVID-19.
“Previous infection used to protect against delta, and now with omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case,” one of the researchers, Anne von Gottberg of the University of Witwatersrand, said at a World Health Organization briefing on Thursday.
While the study did not examine the protection offered by vaccination, von Gottberg said: “We believe that vaccines will still, however, protect against severe disease.”
The findings, posted online Thursday, are preliminary and haven’t yet undergone scientific review.
While all eyes are on the omicron variant that is popping up, the delta form of the coronavirus isn’t finished wreaking havoc in the U.S., swamping hospitals with record numbers of patients in the Midwest and New England.
“Omicron is a spark that’s on the horizon. Delta variant is the fire that’s here today,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Maine, where an unprecedented 334 people were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of midweek.
The U.S. recorded its first confirmed omicron infection on Wednesday, in a Californian who had been to South Africa. Several more cases were reported Thursday in the New York City area, Minnesota, Hawaii and Colorado under circumstances suggesting the variant has begun spreading within the U.S.
On Friday, more states reported confirmed omicron cases including Pennsylvania, Maryland and Nebraska.
For now, the extra-contagious delta variant accounts for practically all cases in the U.S. and continues to inflict misery at a time when many hospitals are struggling with nurse shortages and a backlog of patients undergoing procedures that had been put off early in the pandemic.
The fear is that omicron will foist even more patients, and perhaps sicker ones, onto hospitals.
In Minnesota, which ranks third in new cases per capita, the Pentagon sent medical teams last month to two major hospitals to relieve doctors and nurses, and another team was scheduled to arrive Friday.
“This fourth wave, I can pretty clearly state, has hit Minnesota harder than any of the previous ones,” said Dr. Timothy Johnson, president of the Minnesota chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
He said hospitals are struggling because of a combination of a lack of nurses, fatigue and patients undergoing treatments that had to be postponed earlier in the crisis. “Now those chickens are coming home to roost a little bit,” he said.
Two years into the outbreak, COVID-19 has killed over 780,000 Americans, and deaths are running at about 900 per day.
COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. have dropped by about half since the delta peak in August and September, but at about 86,000 new infections per day, the numbers are still high, especially heading into the holidays, when people travel and gather with family.
With the onset of cold weather sending more people indoors, hospitals are feeling the strain.
“Delta is not subsiding,” said Dr. Andre Kalil, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Nebraska on Tuesday reported 555 people in the hospital with COVID-19 the highest number since last December, when the vaccine rollout was just beginning.