S African doctor says patients with Omicron variant have "very mild" symptoms
Now designated Omicron by the World Health Organization, the variant was detected and announced by South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Nov. 25
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, told Reuters that on Nov. 18 she noticed seven patients at her clinic who had symptoms different from the dominant Delta variant, albeit "very mild".
Now designated Omicron by the World Health Organization, the variant was detected and announced by South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Nov. 25 from samples taken from a laboratory from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.
Coetzee said a patient on Nov. 18 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.
