SA's 300% spike in Covid cases ‘driven by Omicron’
South Africa has seen a 300% jump in new Covid-19 cases over the past seven days driven by the new Omicron variant.
Health Minister Joe Phaahla shared the alarming news during a media briefing on Friday morning.
He says the country's positivity rate has soared to 22% from below 2% in mid-November.
Phaahla says higher rates of infections are being reported across the country.
"Over the last seven days, the new spike has moved in to the whole of Gauteng and it is also registering presence in all nine provinces, with numbers starting to rise the Western Cape, KZN, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga - also with high positivity rates.
"Currently, only the Free State and the Northern Cape are still showing relatively low numbers and low positivity rates."
The minister says the new variant appears to be highly transmissible but less severe.
"The infections ate causing mostly mild illness, especially for those who are vaccinated, with hospital admissions mainly dominated by those who are not vaccinated and young people below the age of 40, most of whom are not vaccinated."
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