South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: RODGER BOSCH / AFP
Front-line workers across the country confirm fewer hospitalisations despite the high increase of omicron infections during the current fourth wave.
Last weekend, President Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the first people to be vaccinated, tested positive for the Omicron strain.
Professor Alex van den Heever, chair of social security systems administration and management studies at the Wits School of Governance, explained Ramaphosa should have been vaccinated twice.
“The president was vaccinated at the beginning of the Sisonke trial with J&J which should have been a two-shot regime. He got infected just as he was about to get his second shot,” Van den Heever said.
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He said it was to be expected that Ramaphosa would be vulnerable to the infection because he was technically not fully vaccinated.
Johannesburg general practitioner Dr Leon Odendaal said he also saw vaccinated people testing positive for the virus. “I have not yet had any vaccinated people hospitalised, despite some of them having comorbidities and advanced age,” he added.
Mitchells Plain general practitioner Dr Ellapen Rapiti said from mid-October, he saw a handful of patients with what seemed like mild flu. “Only to learn six weeks later that I had been seeing patients with the Omicron infection,” he said.
Rapiti said in about two months he saw fewer than 100 patients with Omicron. “But from 2 December to 11 December, I saw 48 patients with the Omicron infection. That is about eight a day. I also saw more children during the Omicron infection than I did with the Delta infection,” he said.
Rapiti said the only symptom in children was a fever that lasted for two days at most, with no other symptoms or complications. Some patients with Omicron were double-vaxxed and some previously had the Delta strain. But none had been infected with the Beta strain,” he said.
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