Thread by @ewnreporter

#COVID19Africa WHO Regional Emergency Director for Africa, Dr Salam Gueye and Professor Anne von Gottberg, Clinical Microbiologist, Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, NCID is giving on update on the COVID-19 pandemic on the continent. KB

#COVID19Africa Gueye says 7,5% of Africa’s population has been fully vaccinated - more than 80% of people have not even received 1 dose of the coronavirus vaccine. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg yesterday in SA we reported more 8000 new cases in the country, most of them in the epicenter of our current beginning of the 4th wave. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg, the numbers are increasing very, very quickly - we’re up to 8000, I think it will be up to 10 000 per day and most of these cases are in Gauteng. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg, however, in all of our provinces we’re seeing an increase in % testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. KB

#COVID19Africa our reproductive numbers has increased, we think the number if cases will increase exponentially in all provinces throughout the country. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg explains of the the 8000 + new cases “and there are many cases that we’ve identified over the last weeks, we only have a limited number that have been sequenced ( to see which COVID-19 variant caused the infection ). KB

#COVID19Africa For the month of November we have 249 sequences from the NGS-SA ( Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa ) of those 184 have been confirmed to be #Omicron. So about 75% of current sequences we have are from the Omicron coronavirus variant. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg, “overall what worries us, we have a system in place that looks at reinfections, we monitor using our testing database that has PCR and antigen tests for the entire country - public and private sector...

#COVID19Africa we monitor the 1st test and can see the other tests as they come in.

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg, “we call a reinfection another (positive ) test from the same individual, 90 days after the first positive test. KB

#COVID19Africa we monitor these reinfections for the Beta and Delta wave and we didn’t see an increase in reinfections over and above what we expect when the force of infection changes, when the wave stops - however we are seeing an increase for Omicron. KB

#COVID19Africa Von Gottberg, that sort of speaks to the fact that our population with a high seroprevalence - here many people have had previous infection - we believe that previous infection does not not provide them protection due to Omicron. KB

#COVID19Africa It hopefully provides them with protection from severe disease, hospitalization and death. KB