S. Africa says no signal of increased Omicron severity

South Africa alerted the world to Omicron late last month, prompting alarm that the highly mutated variant could trigger a new surge in global infections.

Hospital data show that COVID-19 admissions are now rising sharply in more than half of the country's nine provinces, but deaths are not rising as dramatically and indicators such as the median length of hospital stay are reassuring.

Although scientists say more time is needed to arrive at a definitive conclusion, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said the signs on severity were positive.

"Preliminary data does suggest that while there is increasing rate of hospitalisation ... it looks like it is purely because of the numbers rather than as a result of any severity of the variant itself, this Omicron," he said.

In the past few days, a nationwide outbreak linked to variant has been infecting around 20,000 people a day, with 19,018 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, according to data from the National Institute of Communicable Disease, but only 20 new deaths.

Infections have yet to reach the peak of more than 26,000 daily cases during a third wave fuelled by the Delta variant.

South Africa has fully vaccinated about 38% of adults, more than in many other African countries but well short of the government's year-end target. It recently delayed some vaccine deliveries due to oversupply as the pace of inoculations slowed.