South Africa sees rise in Covid cases

South Africa is seeing a rise in Covid 19 cases due to another version of the coronavirus, health experts say.

Cases had been dropping in the country since February. A new omicron subvariant that scientists call BA is being called by the scientists. Salim Abdool Karim, who previously advised the government on its Covid 19 response, said 4 began putting up cases last week and they have risen rapidly since.

Abdool Karim, a public health expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that there has been only a slight rise in hospitalizations and no increase in deaths.

South Africa is recording just over 6,000 Covid- 19 cases a day, up from a few hundred just a few weeks ago. The proportion of positive tests jumped from 4 percent in mid-April to 19 percent Thursday, according to official figures. Wastewater surveillance has shown an increase in the spread of the coronaviruses.

Abdool Karim said it is too early to tell whether BA is a problem with the new mutant, as it seems to be gaining dominance over the original omicron and other versions of the virus. The new version is notable because the omicron variant first appeared in November in South Africa and Botswana before sweeping around the world.

Helen Rees, Executive Director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said there was a worrying trend. Children are among the first to be winding up in hospitals, just like during the original omicron surge.

4 seems to be more transmissible than the original omicron variant and a omicron relative known as BA. Scientists are still studying the new mutant, but it doesn't appear that BA. The World Health Organization said 4 causes more severe disease than other versions of the virus.

In South Africa, gatherings for the recent Easter, Ramadan and Passover holidays, along with massive flooding in the coastal city of Durban, may have contributed to the current surge, Abdool Karim said.

He said that 4 has shown up in other countries but it is not clear whether it will become a dominant global variant.

It hasn't made inroads in the U.S. where BA is located. 2 remains the dominant strain and its descendant, BA. 1, is gaining ground. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it was believed that the descendant could spread faster than previous versions of the virus and caused 29 percent of U.S. Covid cases in the last week.

Stuart Campbell Ray, a Johns Hopkins University infectious disease expert, said that the two variants are spreading in different populations, and he doesn't know of any data that would support a robust direct comparison. South Africa has had the lion's share of Covid 19 in Africa since the start of the epidemic. Although the country's 60 million people account for less than 5 percent of Africa's population of 1.3 billion, South Africa has had more than a quarter of the continent's 11.4 million reported cases and nearly half of Africa's 252,000 deaths. Experts say that it may be due to the fact that it has a more developed public health system and keeps better records of hospitalizations and deaths than other African countries.

More than 44 percent of adult South Africans are vaccinated against Covid 19 according to government statistics.

Benido Impouma, WHO official in Africa, said people must remain vigilant and continue to adhere to public safety measures such as wearing masks, washing hands and social distancing.