South Africa fuels Omicron hope by dodging hospitalisation spike

Citing hospitalisation figures from South Africa, Anthony Fauci, US President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said: "Thus far, it doesn't look like there's a great degree of severity to it."

Initial data from South Africa, the epicenter of the outbreak of the omicron variant, don’t show a resulting surge of hospitalisations.
 
The seven-day moving average of daily new cases in the country rose to 10,055 last week, from less than 300 three weeks earlier. Hospitalisations also picked up but remain relatively low, with admissions standing at 3,268 on Sunday. Whether there will be a deluge of new patients is the biggest question.
 
Severe symptoms in patients who contracted earlier variants typically developed between one and three weeks after they were diagnosed, according to the National Institute for Communicable