South Africa: Omicron causes concern

Kirst Dalton had her gym slot already booked. But then she discovered her COVID test from the previous day had returned a positve result.

“I could drastically feel that I was not okay. And my other half was having a raging fever of nearly 39 degrees,” the 32-year-old woman told DW.

“It’s been a rough six days but I’m hoping we’re coming out of it. We fortunately haven’t lost our taste or smell, which is one of the key things of the omicron variant, if that is the variant we have.”

For Johannesburg residents like the Kirst, contracting COVID almost automatically means contracting the omicron variant these days.

All over South Africa, omicron — which the World Health Organization has labeled as a variant of concern — accounts for 88% of sequenced infections.

Omicron threatens forth wave

Just as many African countries appeared to have gained control over the pandemic, omicron nested in Southern Africa — and raised concerns of a fourth wave.

“In Africa the detection of omicron variant is coinciding with a 54% surge in COVID-19 infections,” said the WHO’s regional emergency director, Abdou Salam Gueye.

“It should be noted that it is mostly in Southern Africa. While new COVID cases are rising in Southern Africa, they have dropped in all other sub-regions during the past week compared with the previous week.”

South Africa most recently recorded around 11,500 cases in one day. Omicron has been found also in Botsuana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Richard Lessels, an infectiologist at Durban’s KwaZulu-Natal University, said he expects the case numbers in South Africa to continue to rise.

“So that gives us again a bit more understanding that this variant is clearly highly transmissible, but looks like it also got that capacity to get round some of the immunity, either from the vaccines or from prior infection,” Lessels told DW.

Because of this immunity level, Lessels expects most cases to be on the milder end of the spectrum.

Economic worries — again

South Africa currently has its lowest lockdown level since October, which allows outdoor events with up to 2,000 participants. There’s a four-hour curfew after midnight and a special set of rules for funerals, but apart from mask and social distancing obligations, most public life has returned to its pre-pandamic normality.

South Africa’s health minister, Joe Phaahla, doesn’t want to impose stricter measures for now.

But for some businesses, the risks are growing.

The “Ballito Rage” music festival on the outskirts of the harbor city of Durban was canceled after just one day after 36 visitors tested positive.

“I hate it,” festival manager Greg Walsh told DW: “It affects my business, it affects my industry, it affects what we do for a living, what we’re passionate about. We’re in the business of happiness. We’re not in the business of being shut down all the time.”

Travel bans spark fear

For many people working in tourism, omicron evokes similiar feelings: So far, they have not been suffering from the new variant itself, but rather from travel bans and restrictions that many government have imposed to curb traffic with South Africa and its neighbors.

Tour guide Zola Ngciwe was alone in his jeep watching the giraffes at Mziki Safari Lodge, northwest of Johannesburg.

“Generally my vehicle will be filled with tourists from all over the world. But the latest COVID-19 travel ban has resulted in cancellation after cancellation. And has left me in the glorious African bush all alone,” he told DW.

After three COVID waves, South African tourism had just started to recover — and had expected to host many vaccinated travelers escaping winter on the northern hemisphere.

Debts rather than guests

“It costs us billions,” said economist Alex van den Heever.

“It’s incredibly unfortunate and is also going to have a chilling effect on whether or not South Africa is ever going to reveal information on a variant again,” the adjunct professor at Witwatersrand University Johannesburg told DW. “I can’t speak for what government will do, what the people will do. But they will think twice.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made the case for solidarity while traveling to Western Africa.

In Ivory Coast, he used a metaphor which hardly any South African diplomat would use lightly: “As South Africa, we stand firmly against any form of health apartheid in the fight against this pandemic.”

Eyes on South Africa’s health system

Omicron has been detected in more than two dozen countries in almost every part of the earth — among them are the West African nations of Nigeria and Ghana.

The South African health system itself has also suffered because of the restrictions.

“What upset us over and above the ban themselves and the restrictions was that there was no offer of support that was to be given to Africa in general or Southern Africa to support us to deal with this continued pandemic”, said Durban-based infectiologist Richard Lessels.

“What’s going to be done to address the vaccine inequality issue, what is going to be done to make sure that we still have supplies that we need, reagents for our lab to do the sequencing … All these things that don’t immediately get recognized with these travel restrictions but have a huge impact on the direct effect of controlling this virus.”

The ratio of positive tests among all tests conducted is also rising, which points to a growing number of undetected infections. “The key thing is really what we see with hospitalizations and how much strain does the health system come under”, Lessels said.

Another factor adding to this wave’s curve is the vaccination campaign: At least in South Africa, the vaccine itself is not as scarce as it once was. It’s the vaccinees that are often missing nowadays. Thus the government is looking into the option of mandatory vaccinations. And a lottery is supposed to attract people to get the jab: All citizens who get immunized before New Years Eve have the chance to win up to 2 million rand (€110,000).

Regardless of whether the lottery or omicron attracted the vaccinees: This week, the number of jabs per day has increased sharply.

Nickolaus Bauer, Henner Frankenfeld and Adrian Kriesch have contributed to this article.