pieterstreicher Profile picture
Data Analyst. PhD Engineering. Honorary Fellow in the Institute for Medical Humanities - Durham University. The views here represent my own.

Dec 12, 2021, 8 tweets

1 of 7:

Gauteng #Omicron update - 12 December.

The 7 day avg cases increased above the previous highest level of 9,645 on 9 December to 10,131 today.

This is most likely the result of a reporting delay (16,716 today).

The peak is now likely to end up in the window specified.

2 of 7:

I work with cases by reported date. In this table by Louis Rossouw, cases are given by specimen date, but we will have to wait a day or two to see how the 16k cases from today are allocated.

Either way, growth if any is extremely slow currently.

unsupervised.online/static/covid-1…

3 of 7:

The increases in hospital variables were negligible today, but this is most likely the typical weekend effect.

data source: NICD
nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-i…

4 of 7:

The most contentious issue regarding my tweets remain my assertion that #Omicron is extremely mild compared to Delta.

My most compelling argument is that Delta is still running at a CFR of 3% in South Africa, while Omicron is running at ~0.42% at the same time.

5 of 7:

The unexpected early dropoff in cases below my projections might be the result of reporting delays.

All other variables are tracking my projections reasonably well.

6 of 7:

A major fear in Europe seems to be the expectation that #Omicron will infect up to 70% of the population.

#Omicron will infect only 15-25% in South Africa, and we only have light restrictions (a curfew from 12-4am).

Restriction details:
gov.za/covid-19/about…

7 of 7:

All variants and all waves in almost all countries reach saturation at well below 30% infected, even in countries with only light restrictions.

It is unlikely that #Omicron will be different.

Here is an update showing 7 day average cases by specimen date.

More than 50% of cases reported yesterday were sampled several days earlier.

The daily increase is marginal now.

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