Page 43 - Delta Wave News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Said because there's a relatively low rate of hospitalization and death, even now nearly a month after the variant was identified by south african scientists, they are not installing new restrictions. there's still a mask mandate in this country for public spaces. that has been in place for many, many months but there isn't the tight restrictions that we saw early on in the pandemic or the restrictions being put in place because of omicron in israel, parts of europe and potentially in the u.k. the fact is that the hospitalization rates are substantially lower still compared to the delta wave a...

The mayor here, bill de blasio, says the white house should invoke the defense production act to help provide a larger number of at-home tests. he wants monoclonal antibody treatments stepped up. he also said the biden administration should fast track approval of an anti-viral pill from pfizer. what do you think are the steps that can be taken right now, knowing that christmas is just, what, five days away. there's only so much that you can do between now and christmas day. >> yeah, well, chris, first of all, it's incredibly disappointing that we still don't have -- haven't figured out at-home...

Minister says hospitalizations are up but still lower than previous waves. and our david mckenzie is in johannesburg. he joins us now live. david, despite a wave of omicron infections in south africa, hospitalization rates are still lower than previous waves. and there's a lack of any new restrictions. what's going on here? how do they explain this? >> rosemary, first the situation. currently there are a very high number of cases in south africa. in fact the positivity rate overnight was more than 30%. that would be considered extremely high during previous waves. but they haven't seen the rus...

Of the pandemic. we have the problem that it rapidly spreads, so fast that even though it might not be causing so much sickness, but the amount of people being infected, we will have a massive wave of patients being expected in hospital, as we saw in the fourth wave. and what are you seeing on the ground in intensive care? because you have had such a terrible delta wave to deal with, now you've got this on top. yes. so at the moment, we only see rare cases of omicron but if you look around at the borders of germany, you mentioned the netherlands and some others, we are expecting the worst. in ...

Say that two doses will give you significant protection against severe disease, because studies have also come out looking at the t cell side of our immune response, which really helps determine some of the protection against severe disease, and that doesn't seem to be as affected. but having said that, i would encourage everybody to get a booster. the data is clear. the booster helps restore some of the protection against infection, and it most certainly also increases your protection against severe disease and hospitalization. what i don't want people to do is hear the fact that vaccines are...