Omicron variant fuelling ?exponential? rise in Covid cases, say South Africa officials

The Omicron variant has fuelled a "worrying" surge in coronavirus cases in South Africa and is rapidly becoming the dominant strain, local health officials have said, as more countries including the US detected their first cases of the new strain.

The United Arab Emirates and South Korea - which is already battling a worsening outbreak and record daily infections - also confirmed cases of the Omicron variant.

Dr Michelle Groome of South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said there had been an "exponential increase" in infections over the past two weeks, from a weekly average of around 300 new cases per day to 1,000 last week, and most recently 3,500. On Wednesday, South Africa recorded 8,561 cases. A week earlier, the daily tally was 1,275.

"The degree of increase is worrying," Groome said.

The NICD said 74% of all the virus genomes it had sequenced last month had been of the new variant, which was first found in a sample taken on 8 November in Gauteng, South Africa's most populous province.

While key questions remain about how transmissible the Omicron variant is, which has been detected in at least two dozen countries around the world, experts are rushing to determine the level of protection afforded by vaccines. World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove told a briefing that data on how contagious Omicron was should be available "within days".

The NICD said early epidemiological data showed Omicron was able to evade some immunity, but exisiting vaccines should still protect against severe disease and death. BioNTech's chief executive, Uğur Şahin, said the vaccine it makes in a partnership with Pfizer was likely to offer strong protection against severe disease from Omicron.