Category Archives: Corona Virus

JERUSALEM Israel's prime minister is warning that the country will soon see tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases a day.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He said that despite rolling out more than 4.2 million coronavirus booster shots to the country's population of 9.3 million since July, the storm is coming to us these very days.

Daily cases in Israel have risen in the past two weeks from around 700 to the more than 4,000 reported on Sunday.

These are numbers that the world has not known, and that we also havent known, Bennett said.

He said that the governments aim is to allow the economy to function as much as possible, while protecting the most vulnerable among us.

Israel has recorded at least 8,244 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

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Vaccinating Ohio - Find the latest news on the COVID-19 vaccines, Ohio's phased vaccination process, a map of vaccination clinics around the state, and links to sign up for a vaccination appointment through Ohio's online portal.

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Israel's PM warns of coming COVID-19 'storm' - News 5 Cleveland

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) The Ohio Department of Health has released the latest numbers related to the coronavirus pandemic in the state.

The reported numbers on Sunday will reflect the past 48 hours of data with the Ohio Department of Health not reporting numbers on New Years Day.

Numbers as of Sunday, Jan. 2 follow:

The 21-day case average is just under 13,000.

The department reported 1,619 people started the vaccination process, bringing the total to 7,003,020, which is 59.91% of the states population. And6,076received booster shots.

The Ohio Hospital Association reported the following numbers related to COVID-19 patients:

Top federal health officials are looking into adding a negative test along with its five-day isolation restrictions for those who are asymptomatic. Schools across the country are returning from winter break with COVID-19 protocol tweaks. More than 200 Marines were separated from service for refusing the Pentagons COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

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Coronavirus in Ohio Sunday update: More than 37,000 new cases over past two days - NBC4 WCMH-TV

The latest:

Ontario hospitals are feeling the brunt of soaring COVID-19 case counts as the virus rips through the province at record speed and infects high numbers of patients and health-care workers.

The situation has become so serious that some hospital networks are reporting that hundreds of their staff members have tested positive for the virus, are symptomatic or are in isolation after an exposure.

Kevin Smith, president and CEOof Toronto's University Health Network, says those factors combined have resulted in at least 100 staff absences per day as the highly transmissible Omicron variant drives case counts to unprecedented highs across the province.

"There aren't health-care workers growing on trees, so it's a very, very limited supply, and they're in hot demand everywhere," Smith said in a telephone interview.

The number of staff unable to work at UHN's five facilities in recent weeks including Toronto General, Toronto Western and Princess Margaret hospitals is higher than what the facilities experienced in previous waves of the virus.

The high number of unavailable staff comes as Smith has noticed fewer critically ill people entering hospital from the virus. This is despite the fact that Public Health Ontario reported 16,714 new infections on Sunday and a record 18,445 cases on Saturday, noting both figures are considered underestimates.

The number of active cases in the province has now crossed the 100,000 mark.

While Smith said staff are managing the current volumes well, he worriesabout the situation changing.

"I'm obviously worried that as we get people engaged in larger and larger amounts of social interaction, including in schools and other environments, there is risk of additional and significant spread," he said.

"Our hope is that populations like those wouldn't require hospitalization, but we have to be prepared for the fact that they will because in other countries, we're seeing kids' admissions going up."

To prepare, Smith is urging Health Canada to immediately approve Paxlovid, Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 pills, for emergency use.

He is also looking at redeploying staff to areas most in need and pulling hospital doctors and nurses back from vaccine clinics, where they can be replaced with other regulated health-care workers.

West of Toronto, similar moves are being considered at Hamilton Health Sciences, which runs Hamilton General Hospital.

Earlier in the week, organization president and CEO Rob MacIsaac asked vacationing, part-time and casual staff to pick up extra hours in exchange for premium pay up until Wednesday.

He made the appeal as the new year began with at least 411 of his staff in isolation at home and numerous outbreaks across his hospital sites.

"Unfortunately, the Omicron variant has set us back several steps," MacIsaac said in a news release. "Consequently, we are once again facing immense pressures around hospital occupancy and staffing."

Hospitals were experiencing an increase in patients who tested positive for COVID-19. Many were admitted due to medical conditions not linked to the virus, he said.

More than 100 in-patients at his hospitals were positive for COVID-19 as of Dec. 31, and 13 were in intensive care units.

Emergency department volumes were simultaneously exceeding pre-pandemic volumes and seeing an increase in the number of patients arriving to the hospitals by ambulance on a daily basis.

On top of asking health-care workers to pick up extra shifts and hours, MacIsaac said his organization would turn to "extraordinary measures," such as ramping down "procedural and scheduled care" beginning on Tuesdayto divert resources to areas of "greatest need."

He also said he would soon share more information on plans to call back asymptomatic staff with a negative rapid antigen test, who are currently isolating at home, as well as efforts to deploy workers from ambulatory areas to support in-patient care.

With testing capacity strained,experts say true case counts are likely far higher than reported. Hospitalization data at the regional level is also evolving, with several provinces saying they will begin to report more precise data that separates the number of people in hospital because of COVID-19 from those in hospital for another medical issue who also happen to test positive for COVID-19.

In British Columbia, Pacific Coastal Airlines an operator that serves smaller communities throughout the province'sWest Coast and Interior has suspended operations for two days due to Omicron cases at its operational control centre at the South Terminal of the Vancouver International Airport.

In the Prairies, Manitoba is now permitting workers at child-care facilities, child and family services and others who have mild COVID-19 symptoms but have tested negative for the virus to return to work. Meanwhile, a number of trials and appearances scheduled to get underway in Alberta courts this month will be postponed following the enactment of stricter pandemic measures.

In Quebec,demonstrators in Montreal defied acurfew on Saturday evening to protest against measures imposed on residentsin an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. The province reported15,845new casesofCOVID-19 on Sunday and 13new deaths.

In the Atlantic region, Newfoundland and Labrador has set asingle-day record for COVID-19 infections for asixth straight day with 466 cases announced on Sunday. Meanwhile,Nova Scotia logged1,893 infections over the past two days, and Prince Edward Island announced 137 cases since its last update onDec. 31. And starting Tuesday at 11:59 p.m., PCR tests will be available only for select populations deemed high risk in New Brunswick.

In the North, Nunavut confirmed another 22 caseson Sunday raising the territory's active case count to 196 and residents in the N.W.T. capital in need of a COVID-19 test will be able to attend a walk-in clinic on Monday morning.

As of Sunday, roughly289.4million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.4 million.

In Asia,India reported more than27,000 newcases on Sunday, data from the Health Ministry showed, amid growing concerns of a potential new surge stoked by the Omicron variant.

In Europe,the British government has been making contingency plans in case hospitals, schools and other workplaces are hit by major staff shortages amid the country's record-breaking spike in coronavirus infections.

In the Americas, passengers on the cruise ship MSC Preziosa had to wait more than six hours to disembark at Rio de Janeiro Sunday due to an inspection by Brazilian health authorities that confirmed 28 cases of COVID-19 on board 26 among passengers and two in crew members.

In Africa,South Africa has lifted a midnight to 4 a.m. curfew on people's movements, believing the country has passed the peak of its Omicron-driven fourth wave.

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Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world on Sunday - CBC News

An unvaccinated couple with four children died on the same day after contracting COVID-19.

Alvaro and Sylvia Fernandez, of Loma Linda in Southern California, died within hours of each other on 19 December, their family said.

Mr Fernandez, 44, was hesitant about getting a COVID vaccination so had not got his jab before developing symptoms a few days before. His wife, 42, was also unvaccinated.

Read more: What does the latest death and hospitalisation data tell us about Omicron?

His sister, Alma Hernandez, told Sky News affiliate NBC Los Angeles: "He wanted to wait and do more research. He googled information. He didn't want to believe everything that was on the news.

"This is kind of an eye-opener for everybody in my family that whoever is not vaccinated definitely should have their vaccinations."

She added that her brother suffered from underlying health problems, including diabetes.

Alvaro and Sylvia Fernandez had been together since she was 15 after meeting at high school, and were married for 25 years.

They both tested positive for COVID days before dying due to complications from the virus, Mr Fernandez's sister said.

The couple leave behind four children, including twins aged 17.

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"My brother and my sister-in-law, they were very close," said Salvador Fernandez, Alvaro's brother. "They were high school sweethearts. They've been together since she was 15.

"One couldn't live without the other."

An online fundraiser set up by Mr Fernandez's sister to help support their children had reached nearly $20,000 (14,800) by 2 January.

California has been experiencing a rise in COVID hospital admissions, with an increase of about 12% in the last seven days to 4,401.

However, this is less than half the late summer peak and a fifth of a year ago, before vaccines were widely available.

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COVID-19: Couple with four children die on same day after contracting coronavirus - and family encourages others to get vaccinated - Sky News

JETTE, Belgium (StudyFinds.org) People with long COVID may have suffered heart damage if they are still struggling to breathe during exercise a year on, researchers warn. Medical scans show patients who experience breathlessness a year after leaving hospital are more likely to experience cardiovascular problems, even if they never have before.

There is increasing evidence that coronavirus and its long-lasting symptoms such as shortness of breath, also known as dyspnoea, could cause heart issues. Belgian scientists have confirmed that those long COVID symptoms could be linked to the toll the virus takes on peoples hearts.

New scanning techniques could help identify patients who areat risk of developing long COVIDafter being infected.

The findings could help to explain why some patients with long COVID still experience breathlessness one year later and indicate that it might be linked to a decrease in heart performance, says study author Dr. Maria-Luiza Luchian, of University Hospital Brussels in Belgium, in astatement.

Researchers examined data from 66 patients without previous heart or lung diseasewho were hospitalized with COVID-19between March and April 2020. The patients lung capacity and longterm COVID symptoms were assessed a year after being discharged from hospital using special x-ray equipment known aschest computed tomography. Ultrasounds and a more modern imaging technique known asmyocardial workwere also carried out to examine patients heart health.

Scans of patients who continued to be short of breath a year after being hospitalized with COVIDshowed greater heart damage, the researchers report.

Our study shows that more than a third ofCOVID-19 patientswith no history of heart or lung disease had persistent dyspnoea on effort a year after discharge from hospital, says Dr. Luchian. When looking in detail at heart function by cardiac ultrasound, we observed subtle abnormalities that might explain the continued breathlessness.

According tothe American Academy of Physical and Rehabilitation, approximately 10% to 30% of Americans with COVID report having at least one symptom after six months.

New imaging techniques like myocardial work could help doctors keep an eyeon peoples heart healthafter recovering from COVID.

Myocardial work could be a new echocardiographic tool for early identification of heart function abnormalities in patients with long COVID-19, who might need more frequent and long-term cardiac surveillance, says Dr. Luchian. Future studies including differentCOVID-19 variantsand the impact of vaccination are needed to confirm our results on the long-term evolution and possible cardiac consequences of this disease.

The findings were presented at EuroEcho 2021, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology.

South West News Service writer Tom Campbell contributed to this report.

Continued here:

Long COVID sufferers may have heart damage if battling shortness of breath a year later - KFOR Oklahoma City

A daycare in Tolland is closed through Jan. 10 after someone in one of their classrooms tested positive for COVID-19.

Several staff members at the Tolland Kids Academy Child Center were directly exposed to the individual and need to quarantine for 10 days as a result, owner Lori Jackman said.

Someone within the two-year-old classroom tested positive for the virus over the weekend.

"With having to quarantine this many staff, it will be impossible for us to remain open this week and still maintain state ratios," Jackman said.

Jackman said exposed staff and children have to quarantine for 10 days.

The childcare center is recommending anyone who was in the two-year-old classrooms last week get COVID-19 tested.

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes and we appreciate your understanding," Jackman said.

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Tolland Daycare Closed For the Week After Positive COVID-19 Case, Staff Quarantine - NBC Connecticut

Citing a near-record-high surge of COVID-19 patients across its four suburban hospitals, Main Line Health announced Sunday that it will pause all elective surgeries and procedures for the next two weeks to ensure theres staffing and room to accommodate its rapidly rising caseload.

Jonathan Stallkamp, chief medical officer for Main Line Health, said COVID-19 cases have increased exponentially ever since Thanksgiving and the health system which includes Lankenau Medical Center, Bryn Mawr Hospital, Paoli Hospital, and Riddle Hospital is approaching its high, which was nearly 300 cases set in December 2020.

Were not the only ones, either, Stallkamp said. Every other health system in the area is either at or approaching their high, as well.

Although Main Line Health doesnt test for variants, a vast majority of its COVID-19 cases are believed to be the omicron variant, Stallkamp said. The contagious nature of the variant coupled with in-person holiday gatherings is a driving factor in the surge of cases, he said.

Before, where you would take precautions and see a little bit of spread, its nothing like the spread of omicron, Stallkamp said. And it really hit Philly right before Christmas.

The majority of COVID-19 patients at Main Line Health, about 70%, remain unvaccinated, he said.

We do see some breakthrough cases but people are definitely not as sick as they would be if they werent vaccinated, Stallkamp said.

Looking at the projections, Stallkamp said Main Line Health will most likely exceed its record number of COVID-19 patients this month. And with some vaccinated staffers forced to call out with breakthrough cases and winter being a normally high-volume time anyway, the decision was made to postpone elective surgeries to make more room for patients and the beds and staff needed to cover them.

Its the worst to cancel on a patient the night before their surgery, Stallkamp said. Looking at our numbers, we said we need to do this now to be fair to our patients and staff and be ready for any additional cases of COVID that hit us.

While such surgeries as knee and hip replacements are on hold, other procedures, such as those for broken arms and coronary bypasses, remain ongoing, according to Stallkamp.

Main Line Health, which has also updated its visitor policy on its website, will continue to monitor case numbers and reassess the situation in two weeks. Stallkamp said hes hopeful that elective surgeries and procedures will be resumed quickly.

Its a little dj vu, per se, but Im optimistic that this may be the last big hurrah of it, and I think a lot of people are going to get it and maybe not realize they get it because theyre vaccinated, he said. And at that point, I think well have developed pretty decent herd immunity and be back to normal in springtime.

It was unclear whether any other area hospitals or health systems were considering halting elective surgeries and procedures, but at least one, Penn Medicine, has placed stricter guidelines on its masking requirement as a result of the rise in COVID-19 cases.

As of Jan. 3, visitors to Penn Medicine must wear surgical masks, N95 masks, or KN95 masks. Cloth masks, gaiters, bandanas, masks with exhalation valves, gas masks, and face shields (unless for medical reasons) are not permitted.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, where more schools are deciding to go virtual because of the rising tide of COVID-19 cases, the states first lady, Tammy Murphy, tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday.

According to officials, Murphy, who is vaccinated and received a booster, is asymptomatic. Her family members, including Gov. Phil Murphy, have tested negative.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.

Originally posted here:

Main Line Health pauses elective surgeries and procedures amid a surge in COVID-19 cases - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Baring Asia affiliate Sion owns most of the company and the 34-35% dilution is from their side. It helps the company open up a much broader canvas for growth and that is where all of our new shareholders, the public shareholders will enjoy the companys potential and future," says Rajiv Kaul, Exec Vice Chairman & CEO, Whole time Director, CMS Info Systems.

How do you see the ownership post the IPO, a complete OFS. How do things change? What does the listing help you with?It has been a very difficult year for all of us but it is a year which has humbled us and we are also filled with pride that we have been able to launch an IPO successfully and complete it and also listed on the last day of the year. It is a complete offer for sale (OFS) from our shareholders Baring Asia through their affiliate Sion, which is our promoter. Our company has been profitable for 12 years. We have had cash on the balance sheet and therefore the company does not need capital infusion for growth.

We have been growing very well. Baring Asia through their affiliate Sion, owns most of the company and the 34-35% dilution is from their side. It helps the company open up a much broader canvas for growth and that is where all of our new shareholders, the public shareholders will enjoy the companys potential and future.

What is the market share you are enjoying in the key services that you provide and who are your key customers?We are focussed on the BFSI sector. We are a large B2B outsourcing services company and as India grows over the coming decade. not only will consumption increase but business outsourcing will also increase. We have focussed on working with all the banks in the country. We have a variety of services at a foundational level. Our strongest, oldest business is a very robust network that we have set up for making sure that currency is available anywhere anytime in the country from the largest cities to the remotest parts of the country. It is our cash management business. This is a business where we have a coverage of 15,000 pin codes, a fleet of 4,000 vans and we do almost a million to a million and a half activities every month.

Using this business, we have expanded from being a logistics company into technology solutions. In technology solutions, we have two businesses. We are a key player in the entire ATM managed services space which includes everything from deploying the ATM to managing it to maintaining it to running the software on the ATM. We have a massive order book in that business.

What is the impact seen from PayTM, Google Pay, BHIM and various other apps?India is largely an informal economy. As that economy formalises, that formalisation will have many forms. But if you think of the retail sector, there are lots of small retail shops. We cannot even cater to them. We cannot even work with them. But as they formalise into large established organised retail stores, there will be massive amounts of work. The money in circulation has grown from Rs 14 lakh crore to almost Rs 30 lakh crore. In any large store, you see lines of people wanting to pay in cash.

As a society we are comfortable using cash. I see more digital transactions happening. We are clearly seeing the effects of demonetisation. However, my belief is that a large part of semi-urban and rural India is still looking for bank access, for ATM access. Those modes of commerce will increase and as the formalisation happens, the opportunity for CMS is fantastic because we can hope to reap the rewards when a informal business moves to the formal sector.

What is the growth you see for ATM services? Where do you see this geographical and state wise growth for this?The total addressable market (TAM) for us is about Rs 8,000 crore. It is forecast to go to Rs 21,000 crore by 2027, and that is almost a 2.7x increase which would lead to 17-18% growth in the market. As a market leader, we would hope to aspire to grow at that level or even higher if we can. That is at the high macro level for the industry.

India has got 2.5 lakh ATMs. The semi urban and rural markets are growing more than the metro markets but the metros are also growing. Penetration is not a geographical issue, I think it is a state by state issue. We have penetration in states like Delhi and then Tamil Nadu where there are 35 or 40 ATMs for one lakh people while in large parts of India like Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the penetration levels will be 7 or 10 or 12 or 14.

From a 10-year perspective, as these states do better in per capita GDP income increase, consumption will increase, people will have more commerce, they will use both cash and digital. They will use more ATM services and that will lead to growth of ATM transactions and hopefully the number of ATMs.

But ATM cash management is part of our business but not the only business. We do a lot of work around the value chain whether it is the software or the deployment or how to keep the site up and running. During Covid, most of us did not have any issue in accessing cash from an ATM because most of us were not going to bank branches but keeping that whole infrastructure running on behalf of the banks is something which CMS and our other industry collaborators do very well for the nation.

What about client mix, new on-boarding of customers? How will the services be expanded?We work with every bank in India. There are a limited number of banks we work with. As more banks are getting licences, we will get more customers.

But when I think of retail, on behalf of banking customers, we work with more than 2,000 retail customers in the country. They could be retail stores, NBFCs, insurance companies and a variety of retail outlets where we work and serve them for the cash management and technology needs.

The remote monitoring business is the latest one that we are starting by launching it for the BFSI sector. There is a massive opportunity for automating and using software to much better manage and monitor and control an ATM site or a gold loan branch or a bank branch. But it is software, it is a SaS play. Once you build this, there is nothing stopping us from being able to go and sell this to jewellery stores, to solar parks, to warehouses, to logistics. So, this is a very exciting business for us where we feel there is opportunity to make it horizontal outside BFSI and get hundreds of new customers over the next five to six years.

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CMS Info is a key player in ATM managed services space & has a massive order book: CEO - Economic Times

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JOHANNESBURG The Covid-19 virus is spreading faster than ever in South Africa, the countrys president said Monday, an indication of how the new Omicron variant is driving the pandemic, but there are early indications that Omicron may cause less serious illness than other forms of the virus.

Researchers at a major hospital complex in Pretoria reported that their patients with the coronavirus are much less sick than those they have treated before, and that other hospitals are seeing the same trends. In fact, they said, most of their infected patients were admitted for other reasons and have no Covid symptoms.

But scientists cautioned against placing too much stock in either the potential good news of less severity, or bad news like early evidence that prior coronavirus infection offers little immunity to Omicron. The variant was discovered just last month, and more study is needed before experts can say much about it with confidence. Beyond that, the true impact of the coronavirus is not always felt immediately, with hospitalizations and deaths often lagging considerably behind initial outbreaks.

Dr. Emily S. Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said of the signs that the variant is less severe, It would not be shocking if thats true, but Im not sure we can conclude that yet.

In the absence of more hard information, governments have reacted to Omicron with sharp restrictions on international travel and new vaccination requirements. World leaders who were accused of responding too slowly or weakly earlier in the pandemic are eager to be seen as taking action, though some experts question whether the travel restrictions are an overreaction.

The variant has spread rapidly and has been detected in more than 30 countries on six continents so far. Health officials and researchers say that it could be the most contagious form of the virus yet, and that it could soon displace the Delta variant that emerged last year as the predominant form. That has fueled fears that a world eager to emerge from two years of pandemic hardship could be headed into another cycle of illness, lockdown and economic suffering.

In Europe, as in South Africa, there are early indications that Omicron cases may be fairly mild, if easy to contract.

In Britain, the government said Monday that the number of Omicron cases there had climbed to 336, two and a half times as many as on Friday. Denmark reported 261 cases, quadruple the number on Friday, and local media there have reported that a holiday lunch for high school students may have been a superspreader event, with dozens of people catching the new variant.

Britain and Denmark do an unusually large amount of genomic sequencing of virus samples, to tell one variant from another and detect changes, which suggests that many Omicron cases in other countries are simply going undetected.

On Monday, the United States began requiring international travelers arriving in the country to provide proof of a negative coronavirus test taken no more than 24 hours before their flights, a standard that can be hard to meet. Previously, fully vaccinated travelers could show negative test results taken up to 72 hours before departure.

China, a major part of the global travel and tourism economy, announced that to maintain its zero-Covid approach, it would keep international flights at 2.2 percent of pre-Covid levels during the winter. Since August, it has almost entirely stopped issuing new passports, and it requires arriving travelers to quarantine for 14 days and provide extensive paperwork and multiple virus tests.

In South Africa, where scientists say Omicron is already dominant, the pandemic is surging once again. A month ago, South Africa had fewer than 300 new virus cases a day; on Friday and again on Saturday, the figure was more than 16,000. It fell somewhat on Sunday and Monday, but that may be due a reporting lag often seen on weekends.

As the country heads into a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections, we are experiencing a rate of infections that we have not seen since the pandemic started, President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in an open letter to the country. He added: Nearly a quarter of all Covid-19 tests now come back positive. Compare this to two weeks ago, when the proportion of positive tests was sitting at around 2 percent.

A report released this weekend from doctors at the Steve Biko Academic and Tshwane District Hospital Complex in Pretoria, South Africas administrative capital, offers the strongest support yet for a more hopeful take on Omicron, though its author, Dr. Fareed Abdullah, gave reasons to be wary of drawing conclusions.

Dec. 7, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

Dr. Abdullah, director of the Office of H.I.V./Aids and Tuberculosis Research at the South African Medical Research Council, looked at the 42 patients with coronavirus who were in the hospital last Thursday, and found that 29 of them, 70 percent, were breathing ordinary air. Of the 13 using supplemental oxygen, four had it for reasons unrelated to Covid.

Only one of the 42 was in intensive care, in line with figures released last week by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, showing that only 106 patients were in intensive care over the prior two weeks, despite the surge in infections.

Most of the patients were admitted for diagnoses unrelated to Covid-19, the report said, and their infection is an incidental finding in these patients and is largely driven by hospital policy requiring testing of all patients. It said that two other large hospitals in Gauteng Province, which includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, had even lower percentages of infected patients needing oxygen.

Dr. Abdullah said in an interview that he had walked into a Covid ward and found a scene unrecognizable from previous phases of the pandemic, when it would have been full of the humming and beeping of oxygen machines.

Out of 17 patients, four were on oxygen, he said. Thats not in a Covid ward for me, thats like a normal ward.

Dr. Gurley, of Johns Hopkins, noted that the severity of disease reflects not just the variant but also who it is infecting. Two years into the pandemic, far more people have some level of immunity to the virus through vaccination, natural infection, or both, and that could translate to milder cases.

We dont know how to read the genetic sequences to say exactly how this variant will play out, she said. Were getting more information now from South Africa, which is a particular population with a particular profile of pre-existing immunity.

Dr. Maria D. van Kerkhove, the World Health Organizations technical lead for Covid, told CBS News on Sunday, that even if it turns out that a lower percentage of Omicron cases are serious, that could be balanced by a larger number of cases, meaning more hospitalizations and deaths.

Dr. Abdullah also looked at all 166 patients with the coronavirus who were admitted to the Biko-Tshwane complex between Nov. 14 and Nov. 29, and found that their average hospital stay was just 2.8 days, and fewer than 7 percent died. Over the previous 18 months, the average stay for such patients was 8.5 days, and 17 percent died. Shorter stays would mean less strain on hospitals.

Eighty percent of the 166 patients were under age 50, and similar figures have been reported throughout Gauteng a sharp contrast to earlier cohorts of hospitalized Covid patients, who were usually older. That could result from South Africa having a relatively high vaccination rate in people over 50 and a low rate in younger people, but one of the great unknowns about Omicron is whether existing vaccines offer strong protection against it.

Part of the caution in interpreting Dr. Abdullahs report is that the numbers in it are small, the findings have not been peer-reviewed, and he does not know how many of the patients had Omicron, as opposed to other variants of the coronavirus though the government reported last week that it already accounted for three-quarters of virus samples in South Africa.

Dr. Abdullah acknowledged those drawbacks, and noted there could be a lag between Omicron first turning up and a rise in serious illness and deaths. But so far, despite the huge increase in cases, Covid deaths have not risen in South Africa.

Lynsey Chutel reported from Johannesburg, and Richard Prez-Pea and Emily Anthes from New York. Reporting was contributed by Megan Specia, Isabella Kwai, Sui-Lee Wee, Juston Jones and Jenny Gross.

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Early Omicron Reports Say Illness May Be Less Severe - The New York Times