Home » Covid, Johannesburg and Pretoria epicenter of Omicron: among young people the most serious cases

Covid, Johannesburg and Pretoria epicenter of Omicron: among young people the most serious cases

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The discovery of the new Omicron variant has pushed South Africa into the most advanced front of the war against the pandemic. Identified on November 24, yet another mutation of Covid is now present throughout the country, mainly in the rich province of Gauteng and Johannesburg. And it particularly affects young people, that is the least vaccinated segment of the population. A new crisis, aggravated by the travel block decreed by more and more countries, which the South African government considers an undeserved “punishment”. In South Africa, the Omicron variant (which travels with a transmissibility from one person to two others) could affect as much as 90% of new cases.

Of the nearly three thousand new infections in 24 hours, most, about 80% were traced in Gauteng, a northern province where the main cities of the country, Pretoria and Johannesburg, are present. In the area, infections have quadrupled in recent weeks and Johannesburg is in the epicenter of this new emergency. While throughout the country the health system is “already under great pressure from the pandemic,” says one of the MSF doctors in the country. Without vaccine protection, the Omicron variant is showing a higher rate of spread among young people.

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“People between the ages of 20 and 30 arrive with moderate to severe illness, some of whom require intensive care,” explained the head of the intensive care unit at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. In that age group, 65% of South Africans have not yet been immunized. The change in the demographic profile of Covid patients is a further indicator of the real global emergency in the fight against Covid: the very poor vaccination coverage outside developed countries, if we consider that Europe and the US have a coverage level of almost the 60%, while Africa is nailed to 7%, notes the Amref network. South Africa, with just 24% of the population immunized, is the country most affected by Covid on the entire continent. And now, due to the Omicron variant, there is the aggravating circumstance of the progressive international isolation.

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Precisely for this reason the government has criticized all the countries (starting with the EU, the United Kingdom, the USA and Canada) that have closed their borders to South Africans: an undeserved “punishment”, when instead “scientific excellence” should have been applauded. of a country that managed to sequence the new mutation, they pointed out from Cape Town, then noting a different treatment compared to the countries in which the other variants had been identified. The blocking of flights will have repercussions for South Africa, especially economic ones, but limiting the spread of Omicron is a priority. And the local authorities themselves are aware of this, and they could decide in turn to block travel between the internal provinces of the country.

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