South Africa’s president has urged everyone to get vaccinated, as the new coronavirus variant Omicron is becoming severe in South Africa, daily infections were averaging between 200 and 300 in mid- November, this was revealed by a top South African scientist.

South Africa battles Omicron Variant.

The spread of the virus is becoming alarming and has been detected in at least 24 countries around the world, this was revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to top scientists from the global health body and South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), it was said that, “those who have already had other variants of coronavirus do not appear to be protected against Omicron but vaccines are still believed to protect against severe disease”,

“Previous infection used to protect against Delta but now with Omicron that doesn’t seem to be the case,” said Anne von Gottberg, microbiologist at NICD.

The full picture in South Africa will not become clear until “people get so sick that they need to go to hospital” which is generally “three, four weeks later,” says Prof Salim Abdool Karim of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus.

“But the feedback we’re getting from the ground is that there’s really no red flags – we’re not seeing anything dramatically different, what we’re seeing is what we are used to,” he said.