The prominent South African epidemiologist Salem Abdel Karim had expected this week that daily infections in this hardest-hit country on the African continent would witness a more than threefold increase, to reach 10,000 injuries.
On Friday, 16,055 new injuries were recorded in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 3004203.
The government-run National Institute of Infectious Diseases said in its daily update that the rate of increase was “24.3%”.
The sharp rise in infections is attributed to the new mutant, Omicron, which South African scientists first spotted on November 25.
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