About 7.6% of South Africa’s Hospitalized Covid-19 Patients Are In ICU

(Bloomberg) -- South African hospitals have 5,344 Covid-19 patients of which 7.6% are in intensive care units, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said in a report on Friday.

Of the 404 people in ICU, 144 are on ventilators, the institute said. Almost half of the admissions are in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The numbers compare with the 4,795 who were in the hospital a day earlier, with 8.3% of those in ICU.

The Nov. 25 announcement of the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, now named omicron, had sparked concerns of a flood of hospitalizations and severe infections. The country’s three biggest private hospital groups have said that so far cases appear to be milder than in previous infection waves.

The number of people in the hospital due to Covid-19 is, so far, a fraction of the total at the height of earlier infection waves. Covid-19 hospitalizations peaked at nearly 20,000 in January and July, the peaks of the country’s second and third waves respectively.

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