'Virtually everything points toward it being milder disease'. Omicron is being managed at home and people are recovering faster, doctors and medical experts in South Africa say.
As the Omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn't had to send anyone to the hospital.
And that includes older patients and those with health problems that can make them more vulnerable to becoming severely ill from a coronavirus infection, he said.In the two weeks since Omicron first was reported in southern Africa, other doctors have shared similar stories. Just three per cent of patients hospitalised recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20 per cent in the country's earlier outbreaks.
Gauteng saw a 400 per cent rise in new cases in the first week of December, and testing shows Omicron is responsible for more than 90 per cent of them, according to health officials. Dr Pillay is a director of an association representing some 5,000 general practitioners across South Africa, and his colleagues have documented similar observations about Omicron.
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