Organizers halted a music festival for young people on the South African coast after 36 people tested positive for COVID-19 at the site, the latest impact from a new wave of infections sweeping across the country
The new variant has been detected in five out of nine South African provinces and was likely to be present all over the country, the latest official report showed on Wednesday.The daily number of reported cases doubled to 8,561. It was not known how many of those were Omicron as not all test samples are subject to genomic sequencing, but an official presentation said Omicron was "rapidly becoming the dominant variant".
South Africa conducts genome sequencing on only a small proportion of total samples collected each week. The NICD did not give a total number of confirmed cases of Omicron infection. Earlier, organisers halted a music festival for young people after 36 people tested positive for COVID-19 at the site.