A top doctor has said that there are reasons to be hopeful the new Omicron variant is milder than Delta - but said it was still too soon to say with certainty.
Professor Marc Mendelson, Head of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur, University of Cape Town, said it is still "very early" in this wave of infections, particularly given it is a new variant.
He confirmed that South Africa's most recent wave is being driven by the new mutation, but that so far most cases appear to be mild.
However he warned that it will take another week or so to get a better idea on how severe the cases will become.
On the WHO's claim that the early signs on Omicron are promising, Dr Mendelson told RTE's Claire Byrne: "The viruses that have been sequenced show that the vast majority of cases are Omicron.
"I think the word early is very important. Early in a wave with a new variant one often does see milder infections, particularly this time of year in South Africa where schools are now breaking up, there are mass gatherings with younger people.
"We do tend to see infections in the young which are generally milder than in the elder population and those with comorbidities.
"It does take a bit of time to understand this, you tend to see the more severe cases after a couple of weeks and the deaths actually follow that as well.
"There is some hope it may be milder, because in the hospitalisations that we do have we are seeing a lot of people coming in with what we would call incidental Covid, people who have infection but are not coming in because of that.
"And those who are coming in because of Covid and do have breathing problems, at the moment it's not so severe, but it's going to take seven to ten days to get that [information]."
And Dr Mendelson added that if this variant is highly infectious, the fact it is milder may not have a big impact on the strain put on hospitals and ICUs.
He continued: "Another thing to point out is that it is clearly more transmissible because it is able to evade part of the immune system, which means you are going to see more infections.
"And it's really a numbers game, even if you have a very small number that are severe, if you have a massive force of infections you're still going to have a lot of severe cases in your hospital within time."
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