Omicron Variant in South Africa Causes Rise in Covid-19 Reinfections, Researchers Find
Scientists in South Africa tracking the spread of the variant are seeing a rise in coronavirus reinfections in people who had recovered from Covid-19, suggesting previous infection provides less protection against the new variant.
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“Previous infection used to protect against Delta, and now with Omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case,” Professor Anne Von Gottberg from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg said Thursday.
The country, which has the largest known Omicron outbreak, reported 11,535 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, up from 8,561 a day earlier, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said. Last Thursday—also the day South Africa announced the discovery of the new variant—2,465 Covid-19 cases were identified.
The institute didn’t say what variant caused the new infections but scientists say that Omicron is now the dominant variant in the country of 60 million people. In an indication that large numbers of infections aren’t being detected, the proportion of tests coming back positive increased to 22.4% from 16.5% on Wednesday.
Also, the infection count from the company holiday party in Norway is now up from 30-40 to 50 out of 120 attendees. Some might not have been vaccinated but all were tested before attending. They are still sequencing the virus samples but at least some are Omicron and some employees had recently returned from South Africa.