COVID-19: South Africa ends quarantining, contact tracing of Omicron cases

As South Africa witnesses the falling trajectory of the B.1.1.529 Omicron strain, hoping that it will be eliminated completely in the upcoming week, the health authorities have stopped the testing and contact tracing. The country, where the new COVID-19 variant was first detected, announced on Dec. 25, Saturday that the containment of the virus is 'no longer viable’ as the Omicron spread has faded after just a month of a dramatic peak. 

As of last week, the country registered a caseload of 26,976 and for the last five days, the health officials have hardly recorded any cases of Omicron as the strain was eliminated from the overall data in a promising development. The contact tracing would be halted with immediate effect, announced the South African authorities, outlining exemptions to large public gatherings and areas with containment protocols still active, as per the local media reports. Isolation rules for asymptomatic cases of the COVID-19 were scrapped, and any severe symptomatic case will now have to be isolated for just eight days, the reports on Saturday revealed. 

Contact tracing scrapped for both vaccinated, non-vaccinated 

Whether vaccinated or not, any contact tracing for those detected with a confirmed case of the novel COVID-19 will not be done as Omicron shreds away from the country’s infection toll. South Africa has had relief after a worsening peak of Omicron until the last month when cases more than doubled and tripled from just 670 to 20,000 per day, stretching the healthcare systems. Last week, on December 15, the cases peaked at an all-time high with 26,976 infections in a 24 hour period. Then they slumped by 22% by the start of this week. Omicron-driven COVID-19 cases continue to decrease and are on verge of being totally eliminated, the health officials informed. 

“If previous variants caused waves shaped like Kilimanjaro, omicron’s is more like we were scaling the North Face of Everest,” South Africa’s top infectious disease scientist, Salim Abdool Karim, explained to WaPo. “Now we’re going down, right back down, the south face,” Karim continued. The South African health minister stressed that the trend in new COVID-19 cases has been going downwards but last week Omicron accounted for nearly every new coronavirus case in South Africa. The official told the paper that the recent data indicates there’s a slow decline which is being noticed countrywide.