South Africa is over Omicron, and their good news may be a harbinger of hope for the U.S.
(
CBS News)
Johannesburg Only eight weeks after the world first heard about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, when researchers in South Africa who discovered the strain notified global authorities, that country's wave of infections has fallen as sharply as it climbed. Not only that, but South Africa has weathered its fourth wave of COVID-19 with very little interruption to people's lives.
CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta reports that in the suburbs of Johannesburg, restaurants are busy again, traffic is jammed, and the city is bustling.
Omicron quickly became the focus of global anxiety as infections spread across South Africa with ferocious speed. Within days, the country was at the epicenter of the pandemic. And then
well, not much happened at all.
"A little bit at ease"
Patta and her team have monitored one COVID ward, at a hospital in Gauteng province, which includes the metropolis of Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, throughout the pandemic. Six months ago, during the country's battle with the Delta variant, the hospital was overwhelmed. ICU beds and oxygen were running out and the death rate was soaring.
"You are a human being before becoming a nurse, so seeing people die like that is very, very hard," exhausted nurse Justice Mangala told CBS News at the time. .............(more)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-omicron-variant-south-africa-turning-point/