LISTEN | 70% admitted to hospital in fourth wave of Covid-19 are unvaccinated

Seven out of 10 people being admitted to hospital during the fourth wave of Covid-19 are unvaccinated, health minister Joe Phaahla said on Friday.

While scientific work is continuing to determine the efficacy of vaccines against the Omicron variant of the virus, the admissions data suggested they remained effective, Phaahla told a health department media briefing.

“As things stand the vaccines are showing to be very strong in protecting against severe disease,” he said.

Phaahla also revealed that the high proportion of young people admitted to hospitals early in the fourth wave had now reduced. While under-18s initially comprised 21% of admissions, they now account for only 5%.

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A lower proportion of all patients admitted to hospital have severe disease than in the second and third waves.

“Similar experiences have been reported from public and private hospitals in Gauteng. This is still early days but there are very promising signs,” said Phaahla.

While weekly cases had risen by more than 400% in Gauteng last week, hospital admissions increased by only 200%.

Phaahla said the number of vaccine doses administered would pass 27-million on Friday, and 43% of all adults had received at least one dose.

The lowest rate is among under-35s, he said, and Dr Michelle Groome from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said this was probably linked to the higher number of admissions in this group.

The 22,388 cases confirmed on Thursday was the fifth-highest daily total since SA's first case was confirmed 650 days earlier, and higher than any total during the first and second waves

In the UK, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said on Thursday that Omicron is spreading so fast travel restrictions imposed after SA announced the discovery of the variant were “not really going to do much now”.

Prof John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar the variant was a “very severe setback” to hopes of bringing the pandemic under control, The Guardian reported.

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