Rudo Mathivha, head of the ICU of the largest hospital in South Africa – and among the largest in the world -, Chris Hani Baragwanath, in Johannesburg, warned yesterday that the center is receiving younger covid patients – “some under five years ”-, that“ they need to be admitted because they have respiratory failure and require oxygen ”. The doctor did not specify how many minors are admitted to her hospital, but there is a child under 17 years of age in the ICU and 21 hospitalized pregnant women with more serious symptoms than the pregnant women she had seen so far. “We have already occupied beds that were not intended for patients with covid,” he added. The Government has been trying for weeks that adolescents over 12 years old are also vaccinated, because statistics from hospitals show that more than 60% of the cases that are being registered are children, adolescents and young adults under 30 years of age.
South Africa’s poor public health system is not prepared to host minors en masse in its hospitals. “We have not experienced this situation before. We do not know if those who are entering are omicron, because it is necessary to make a sequence of the genome to find out, but most have not received the vaccine or only one of the doses “, continues Mathivha. Trying to maintain the official message of calm, health professionals point out that the fourth wave is already a reality in South Africa. The symptoms of new patients, the rapidity with which infections increase in all provinces, the population groups affected and the infections between vaccinated, are factors that allow us to deduce, explains Mathivha, that “there is a new player” in the battle against covid in the country.
Children under two years of age accounted for 10% of hospitalizations in Tshwane (Pretoria) at the beginning of the week, according to data from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD). Waasila Jassat, a public health specialist for the agency, assured Bloomberg that part of the increase in hospitalizations of children may reflect an extra precaution on the part of parents: “Children are more likely to be admitted as a precaution, because if they treat them at home something can go wrong “,
The NICD reported 8,561 cases of covid this Wednesday, almost double the number registered on Tuesday (4,373). It is not known how many of them are omicron, but it is becoming the dominant variant, with 74% of positives sequenced in November, according to the NICD. In the first three days of this week, there have been 552 new hospital admissions, more than half the total that was registered last week.
Mathivha expressed concern about the possibility that infections between health personnel cause a lack of nurses and doctors in this new wave of infections. “We are very concerned about the high number of health personnel who, even being vaccinated, and in some cases after having received the booster dose, have been infected and, although they have mild symptoms, they must stay home complying with the covid-19 protocol, and keep a quarantine for ten days, “he explained.
Towards mandatory vaccination
The knowledge about the evolution, virulence and effectiveness of the available vaccines with respect to the omicron variant is very limited. The South African Government has asked that scientists be allowed to continue working so that, predictably, in two weeks they will be able to offer verified information that allows new measures and restrictions to be adopted to combat the new variant of the virus. And the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, urged last Sunday the population that has not yet been vaccinated (only 35% of the adult population has received the complete guideline, according to official sources) to go to the immunization points and use the main tool that exists at the moment to combat covid-19.
As a result of the intense debate on the need for the vaccine to be mandatory to access certain places and carry out certain activities, more and more companies have taken the initiative to implement it directly. And yesterday the universities of Wits (Johannesburg) and the UWC (Cape Town) announced that students who want to attend the academic year that will begin in January must be vaccinated. Some stores also offer discounts on specific days to those who present the vaccination card, and several unions – with great mobilization capacity in the country – have been forceful, warning of “the need to act now.” The rejection of vaccines, especially among young people, is due to the fact that, despite information and awareness campaigns, some distrust the Government and claim to fear becoming sterile, others that their DNA will change, and others adduce religious reasons, related with the “natural immunity”, to reject the puncture.
“Taking into account the high transmission that the virus is having at the moment, we strongly recommend that people who have not yet been vaccinated do so, because it is the way to defend themselves against a serious illness or even death,” insisted Mark van del Heever, spokesman for the Western Cape Province Health Department. A warning that the family doctor Unben Pillay seconded, explaining that the cases they are seeing these days begin with “symptoms of a cold, including a dry cough, which can be overcome at home when vaccinated.”
Michelle Groome, head of Public Health Surveillance and Response at the NICD, urged avoiding mass gatherings that could facilitate contagion, because “responsible actions are key to limiting the impact of the fourth wave.”
Experts point out that the next seven to ten days will be decisive to know the evolution of omicron. “The positive side”, Richard Friedland, executive director of the Netcare group, told the national media yesterday, “is that if we have a variant that exceeds the delta and does not cause a serious illness, we will be facing a cold pandemic …”.
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