South African scientists said it is too
early to determine that the omicron variant will only cause mild illness as it
has so far affected only the young people, who could be better placed to fight
off the virus.

However, the scientists, in their
presentation to lawmakers on Wednesday, said people tend to develop severe
illness after carrying the virus for some time, reported Bloomberg. 

Also Read: WHO working with scientists from across world to understand omicron better

The latest infections have occurred
“mostly in the younger age groups but we are starting to see this move
into the older age groups,” Michelle Groome, head of public health
surveillance and response at the NICD, told the lawmakers. “We are also
expecting that the more severe complications may not present themselves for a
few weeks,” he said during the presentation.

Earlier the country’s National Institute
for Communicable Diseases said the daily number of new confirmed cases in South
Africa, where the first case of omicron was detected, almost doubled to 8,561
in the last 24 hours. Omicron is now by far the dominant variant in the
country.

On November 25, the South African
government announced the emergence of a new variant in Pretoria. The World
Health Organisation (WHO) called the new variant of coronavirus a “variant of
concern”. It caused a stock market disruption as countries across the world
started imposing a travel ban on South Africa and several southern African
countries where the variant was detected.

‘Non-vaccinated people unprotected against
Omicron’

Richard Lessells, an infectious disease
specialist, said the severity of disease caused by the new variant could be mild because of the fact that most of the people have already contracted other
variants or have been inoculated, giving them some immunity.

“If this virus and this variant
spreads very efficiently through the population, then it will still be able to
find those people in the population who are unvaccinated and may be unprotected
against severe disease,” he said. “That’s what also concerns us when
we think about the continent more generally.”

Also Read: UK likely to announce an expansion of booster shots rollout

At present, South Africa’s vaccination rate
is higher than most African nations but lower than western nations, with about
a quarter of the population fully inoculated. Across the continent of 1.3
billion people, only 6.7% are fully vaccinated, with only 0.1% of the 100
million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, having received their
shots.

“We expect that the protection you
have against severe disease is much more difficult for this variant to get
around,” Lessells told the lawmakers. “We don’t expect this will have
any effect on the therapeutics we use,” he said.