SA doc: Patients with Omicron have ‘very mild’ symptoms so far

SA doc: Patients with Omicron have ‘very mild’ symptoms so far

29.11.2021

A South African doctor who was one of the first to suspect a different coronavirus strain among patients said on Sunday that symptoms of the Omicron variant were so far mild and could be treated at home.

Dr Angelique Coetzee, a private practitioner and chair of South African Medical Association, said that on November 18 she noticed seven patients at her clinic who had symptoms different from the Delta variant, albeit “very mild”. Coetzee said a patient reported at her clinic being “extremely fatigued” for two days with body aches and headache. “Symptoms at that stage was very much related to normal viral infection. And because we haven’t seen Covid-19 for the past eight to 10 weeks, we decided to test,” she said, adding that the patient and his family turned out to be positive. On the same day, more patients came in with similar symptoms. Since then, she’s seen two to three patients a day. “We have seen a lot of Delta patient... And this doesn’t fit in the clinical picture,” she said, adding she alerted South Africa’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases on the same day. “Most of them are seeing very, very mild symptoms and none of them so far have admitted patients to surgeries. We have been able to treat these patients conservatively at home,” she said.

Coetzee, who is also on the ministerial advisory committee on vaccines, said so far patients have not reported loss of smell or taste and there has been no major drop in oxygen levels with the new variant. Her experience so far has been that the variant is affecting people who are 40 or younger. Almost half of the patients with Omicron symptoms that she treated were not vaccinated.

 REUTERS

Dr Angelique Coetzee said a patient reported being ‘extremely fatigued’ with body aches & headache. So far, patients have not reported loss of smell or taste and there has been no major drop in oxygen levels