The Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19 in South Africa has advised Health Minister Joe Phaahlathat contact tracing should be eliminated for the omicron variant of the virus, reported South Africa’s News 24.
Out of South Africa…
“The Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on Covid-19 has written to Health Minister Joe Phaahla, recommending that the quarantining of contacts be stopped as it is no longer viable in the current social and economic climate.”https://t.co/t7Be0TohdO— RyanSABC (@RyanSABC) December 19, 2021
“It stands to reason that if the vast majority of cases are not diagnosed, then the vast majority of case contacts are also not diagnosed,” the MAC letter said. “This means that quarantining and contact tracing are of negligible public health benefit in the South African setting.”
Indeed, quarantining and contact tracing have a number of negative consequences, especially as the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic.
Summit News cited “loss of income, loss of employment, and loss of schooling time” as some of the concerns that the MAC had about the quarantine policy in South Africa.
At least in South Africa, the omicron variant seems to be milder than other COVID variants.
“Omicron appears to cause less severe illness than earlier variants of the coronavirus but is more resistant to the two-dose Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine widely used in South Africa, according to a major private study of the variant,” said the Washington Post.
The study also showed that those who contracted omicron variant were 29% less likely to end up hospitalized than those in the initial wave in March 2020, said the Post.
Some experts are saying the reason why infections in South Africa are less severe may be because the country has, to some extent, reached herd immunity after experiencing three severe outbreaks.
“So, while only about a quarter of South Africans had been vaccinated when omicron finally arrived,” said NPR, “the vast majority of residents had likely already been infected with previous variants of SARS-CoV-2.”
South Africa had both a lower mortality rate and lower cases per million than the U.S.
South Africa has had 55,000 COVID cases per million versus the U.S. case count of 155,000 per million.
But still herd immunity escapes the U.S.
