South Africa reported a rapid drop in covid cases today but the main reason for that was a drop in testing.
These are the numbers from Gauteng, which is the province at the epicentre of the outbreak.
- 23 Nov: 605
- 24 Nov: 1018
- 25 Nov : 1950
- 26 Nov : 2173
- 27 Nov : 2629
- 28 Nov : 2308
- 29 Nov : 1909
- 30 Nov: 3143
- 1 Dec: 6168
- 2 Dec: 8280
- 3 Dec: 11553
- 4 Dec: 11,607
- 5 Dec: 7929
- 6 Dec: 4488
On the face of it, that looks like great news but the number of tests is down by two-thirds in the past two days. That's partially a weekend effect. Just 24,159 tests were processed and positivity was 26.4%, which is the highest during this outbreak. It suggests that most infections are being missed.
The good news is that cases don't appear to be accelerating faster, even after adjusting for testing. Cases are up 135% w/w with about the same number of tests but that's an improvement over recent days.
That's somewhat of a sign that it's not quite as infectious as feared. Models tend to oversample around outbreak events and in countries where there have been superspreader events.
In terms of severity, there is an increase in re-infection rates, meaning that past infection isn't as effective. So far infections in vaccinated individuals have been mild.
“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a more than doubling of hospital admissions each day,” said Ian Sanne, an infectious diseases specialist who serves on South Africa’s COVID-19 presidential advisory committee.
Meanwhile, the list of countries where they've detected the variant is now too long to name. You can assume that it's nearly everywhere or will be soon.
What's encouraging is that markets have stabilized. Oil and copper were both higher today alongside US stock markets. The market has shown a remarkable ability to look beyond covid and that's likely to be the case once again, baring a turn for the worse in hospitalization.