The country that has recorded the most cases of coronavirus and deaths on the African continent came out of only a fourth wave around January and had predicted that a fifth wave could start in May or June, in the early winter of the southern hemisphere. Case Study of Covid-19 South Africa Health Minister Joe Phaahla said in a statement that although hospitalizations were rising, there had been no dramatic change so far in intensive care unit admissions or deaths. He said that at this stage the health authorities had not been notified of any new variant, except for changes to the dominant Omicron variant that is being released. Infectious disease specialist Richard Lessells told the same source that the declining immunity from previous waves could contribute to an earlier-than-expected resurgence of cases. He said the growing share of infections attributed to Omicron subcategories BA.4 and BA.5 suggests that they had a growth advantage over other Omicron subtypes such as BA.2. So far there has been no sign that BA.4 and BA.5 were causing significantly more serious illness, said Waasila Jassat of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases. South Africa has reported more than 3.7 million Covid cases and more than 100,000 deaths during the pandemic. On Thursday, the WHO office in Africa cited rising cases in South Africa as the main driver of growth on the African continent. Senior health official Nicholas Crisp also said on Friday that South Africa had several doses of vaccines and had no plans to get more. He added that the government does not intend to buy Pfizer Paxlovid’s Covid therapeutic pill for public sector patients, in part because it was too expensive.
