South Africa's latest COVID surge blamed on omicron mutant

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa is seeing a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases driven by yet another version of the coronavirus, health experts say.

Cases had been dropping in the country since February. But a new omicron subvariant that scientists call BA.4 began pushing up cases last week and they have risen rapidly since, said Salim Abdool Karim, who previously advised the government on its COVID-19 response.

So far, there has been only a slight rise in hospitalizations and no increase in deaths, said Abdool Karim, who is a public health expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

South Africa is recording just over 6,000 COVID-19 cases a day, up from a few hundred just a few weeks ago. The proportion of positive tests jumped from 4% in mid-April to 19% Thursday, according to official figures. Wastewater surveillance has also shown increases in coronavirus spread.

The new mutant appears to be quickly achieving dominance over the original omicron and other versions of the virus, but Abdool Karim said “it’s too early to tell whether BA.4 is going to cause a fully-fledged wave.”

Still, the new version is notable because the omicron variant first emerged in November in South Africa and Botswana before sweeping around the world.

There is one concerning trend, said Helen Rees, executive director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg: Children are the first to be winding up in hospitals, just like during the original omicron surge.

Experts say BA.4 seems to be more transmissible than both the original omicron variant and an omicron relative known as BA.2. Scientists are still studying the new mutant, but it doesn't appear that BA.4 causes more severe disease than other versions of the virus, WHO said in a recent...