Corona 19 temporary ward at Stevevico Academic Hospital in Pretoria, South Africa. [EPA = 연합뉴스]In South Africa, the first epicenter of Omicron, a new study suggests that the pandemic appears to be coming to an end.
According to Bloomberg News on the 7th (local time), South African researchers investigated the trend of infection waves at the Stevevico Academic Hospital, a national hospital in Pretoria, and found that “the prevalence of the omicron mutation spread at an unprecedented rate and showed a much milder disease than previous mutations.” He explained like this. Accordingly, if this pattern is repeated globally, we will see complete decoupling (decoupling) between the confirmed cases and the dead, which might be a harbinger of the end of the serious phase of the corona pandemic in Omicron. The World Health Organization (WHO) also announced on the 4th that there is a decoupling between the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths related to the omicron mutation.
“It may be that a phase of rapid transmission is over and a certain region is entering an endemic phase like the flu,” the researchers explain. Earlier, Microsoft (MS) founder Bill Gates predicted in December of last year that the pandemic of Corona would end this year and become endemic.
According to a statement from the South African Medical Research Council, in the current study, only 4.5% of hospitalized patients died during the Omicron infection wave, compared to 21% during the previous outbreak. Even fewer people were admitted to the intensive care unit, and hospital stays were significantly shorter. The researchers analyzed the records of 466 current cases and 3976 previous infections at the Stevevico Academic Hospital. South Africa was the epicenter of the first outbreak of Omicron infection at the end of November last year, and it can serve as a reference precedent for other countries around the world.
In the United States, it is predicted that the Omicron epidemic may have a similar shape to that of South Africa. Rochelle Wallensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on the 7th (local time) that the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States caused by omicron mutations might spike like a spike and then quickly subside. Director Wallensky said the coronavirus outbreak in South Africa was shaped more like an ‘ice pick’ rather than a wave, explaining that similar steep rises and falls might occur in the United States.
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