Switzerland: COVID cases rising in southern Africa as Omicron detected in Ghana and Nigeria - WHO

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WHO’s regional emergency director in Africa said that COVID-19 cases are rising in southern Africa and Nigeria and Ghana confirmed cases of the Omicron variant, speaking at an online press briefing on Thursday.
“In Africa, the detection of the omicron variant is coinciding with a 54 percent surge in COVID-19 infections. It should be noted that it is mostly in southern Africa,” Dr Abdou Salam Gueye said.
Gueye continued that in some areas infections were dropping. “While new COVID-19 cases are rising in southern Africa, they have dropped in all other subregions during the past week compared with the previous week. The ongoing investigation will be key to determining whether the spike is driven by the omicron variant or other factors.”

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SOT, Abdou Salam Gueye, WHO (World Health Organization) Regional Emergency Director: “The world is once again confronted by a new COVID-19 variant of concern. While research is ongoing to know whether the omicron variant is more contagious, cause severe illness or has an impact on vaccine efficacy, its emergence is a stark reminder that we must double down our curving COVID-19 transmission. An increased number of countries are reporting the new variant since it was first sequenced in South Africa. Ghana and Nigeria have become the latest African countries to detect omicron. Globally more than 20 countries have now reported the new variant. It is expected that the omicron variant will be detected in more countries as national authorities set up surveillance and sequencing operations.”

SOT, Abdou Salam Gueye, WHO Regional Emergency Director: “In Africa, the detection of the omicron variant is coinciding with a 54 percent surge in COVID-19 infections. It should be noted that it is mostly in southern Africa. While new COVID-19 cases are rising in southern Africa, they have dropped in all other sub regions during the past week compared with the previous week. The ongoing investigation will be key to determining whether the spike is driven by the omicron variant or other factors. Thankfully, the speed and transparency by Botswana and South Africa in detecting and alerting the world to the new variant has been for us an important issue and it has given to the world an early start in mounting an effective response.”

SOT, Anne von Gottberg, Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology And Infectious Diseases at University of the Witwatersrand: “In our population with a high serum prevalence, so many people have [had] a previous infection, we believe that that previous infection does not provide them protection from infection due to omicron, however, hopefully it provides them with protection against severe disease, hospital admissions and death.”

SOT, Anne von Gottberg, Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology And Infectious Diseases at University of the Witwatersrand: “In this case, this virus might be as transmissible (as previous variants). It’s own characteristics, the virus characteristics, may be very similar or slightly less than delta (unintelligible) or being able to be contagious. However, it’s the susceptibility of the population that is greater now. Because previous infection used to protect against delta and now with omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case. We believe that vaccines will still, however, protect against severe disease, because we’ve seen this decrease in protection using vaccines with the other variants, but the vaccines have always held out to prevent severe disease and admission into hospitals and death.”

SOT, Anne von Gottberg, Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology And Infectious Diseases at University of the Witwatersrand: “Our final message, really, about this variant is to consider the basic principles of what we should be doing. We should be vaccinating as many people as we can, so that they can have vaccine-induced protection. In addition, we should be using our non-pharmaceutical interventions, trying to remember to use masks, to use the fresh air that we have and ventilation, to prevent and to avoid gatherings of large numbers of people in unventilated spaces. And I think, one message I guess to end off with is that the same things that help or hold true for the other variants, I think to a large extent hold true for this variant.”

#COVID19 #Omicron

Video ID: 20211202-028

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