THE WHO has rushed a team of experts to South Africa’s Gauteng province, the epicentre of the new Omicron variant of COVID-19, to ramp up surveillance and contact tracing efforts as the country grapples with rising cases of infections.

Omicron, which was first identified in South Africa exactly a week ago, now has been detected in at least 24 countries around the world, including India.

“We are deploying a surge team in Gauteng province to support surveillance and contact tracing,” World Health Organisation’s Regional Emergency Director for Africa Dr Salam Gueye said in a media briefing on Thursday.

A team is already working in South Africa on genomic sequencing, he said.

The Gauteng province, which is the economic hub of South Africa, has accounted for almost 80 per cent of the infections over the past week. Some 11,500 new infections were registered on Thursday, a sharp rise from the 8,500 cases confirmed on the previous day.

In contrast, daily infections were averaging between 200 and 300 in mid-November in the country, according to health officials.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said at the same briefing that around 75 per cent of samples tested positive for the new variant.

“For the month of November, we had 249 sequences and of those, 183 have been considered to be Omicron,” said NICD clinical microbiologist professor Anne von Gottberg.

According to the Africa Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, the continent recorded 52,300 new COVID-19 cases compared to the previous week, a 105 per cent increase.

WHO’s Africa director Dr Matshidiso Moeti said on Thursday that countries “must adjust their COVID-19 response and stop a surge in cases from sweeping across Africa and possibly overwhelming already-stretched health facilities.”

Gauteng Premier David Makhura confirmed in a separate media briefing that the province was on the cusp of a fourth wave.

The premier said that since Monday, there were over 50,000 vaccinations a day from the low of 30,000 daily before

the announcement of the new variant.