{"id":748966,"date":"2022-01-14T04:33:59","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T04:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/14\/omicron-covid-19-surge-in-africa-slowing-down-who-reports\/"},"modified":"2022-01-14T04:33:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T04:33:59","slug":"omicron-covid-19-surge-in-africa-slowing-down-who-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/14\/omicron-covid-19-surge-in-africa-slowing-down-who-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Omicron COVID-19 surge in Africa slowing down, WHO reports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"slide-image-container\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 100%;\" width=\"975\" height=\"648\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/WHO-Omicron-COVID-19-surge-in-Africa-slowing-down.jpg\" title=\"WHO: Omicron COVID-19 surge in Africa slowing down\" alt=\"WHO: Omicron COVID-19 surge in Africa slowing down\"\/>\n<\/div>\n<p>Africa COVID-19 pandemic numbers seemed to have flattened after a 6 week surge of omicron variant. EPA-EFE\/Kim Ludbrook<\/p>\n<article itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><span class=\"story_dl\">Jan. 13 (UPI) &#8212;<\/span> The surge of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant in Africa is flattening, the World Health Organization said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>As of January 11th, there have been 10.2 million COVID-19 cases in Africa, the WHO reported.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<p>Southern Africa, which saw a huge increase in infections during the past six weeks, recorded a 14% decline in infections during the past week.<\/p>\n<p>East and central Africa also experienced a drop, while North Africa reported a 121% increase in cases during the past week.<\/p>\n<p>Deaths in Africa rose by 64% in the week ending Sunday, the WHO said, adding that deaths during the Omicron surge remain lower than previous waves of the pandemic. About 9% of the continent&#8217;s ICU beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Over the past week, cases plateaued compared with the week before, dropped by a little bit &#8212; point-two percent. Infections have also declined in three of Africa&#8217;s five subregions. Only North and West Africa are currently seeing an increase in cases,&#8221; Abdou Salam Gueye, director of emergency preparedness and response, said according to VOA news.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, he also advised not to let one&#8217;s guard down, as the latest data was collected during the holidays, when infections seemed to be under reported.\n<\/p>\n<p>In South Africa, Omicron has become the most common cause of new COVID-19 cases, doubling every 2.2 days.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa COVID-19 pandemic numbers seemed to have flattened after a 6 week surge of omicron variant. EPA-EFE\/Kim Ludbrook Jan. 13 (UPI) &#8212; The surge of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant in Africa is flattening, the World Health Organization said Thursday. As of January 11th, there have been 10.2 million COVID-19 cases in Africa, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":748967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}