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<\/a><\/p>\nEnd to contact tracing in South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n South Africa will stop coronavirus contact tracing and won\u2019t ask those who\u2019ve been directly exposed to infected people to quarantine, indicating a shift away from tough restrictions to contain the pandemic.<\/p>\n Authorities in Africa\u2019s most-industrialized nation will only try and track the spread of the disease in a cluster outbreak, the nation\u2019s director-general of health said in a circular dated Thursday. As much as 80% of the population have some sort of immunity from prior illness or vaccines, the department said.<\/p>\n \u201cContainment strategies are no longer appropriate — mitigation is the only viable strategy,\u201d Sifiso Buthelezi said in the missive. \u201cQuarantine has been costly to essential services and society as many people stay away from their work and thus lose their income.\u201d<\/p>\n While South Africa\u2019s contact tracing has been negligible compared with many countries outside the continent, the move still represents a change in approach even as the highly transmissible omicron variant continues to rage. The government declared a state of disaster when the coronavirus arrived in March 2020, and has followed an alert level-based system of curbs depending on the prevalence of infections ever since.<\/p>\n The rationale provided for the strategy change \u201cis that the quarantine process does not have a major effect in terms of chains of transmission and is difficult to implement and sustain,\u201d Adrian Puren, acting executive director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said in an e-mailed response to questions.<\/p>\n The shift may also be influenced by South Africa\u2019s push to recover from its deepest economic contraction in at least a quarter-century last year. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict gross domestic product will expand 4.9% in 2021, compared with a previous estimate of 5.1%, partly due to travel bans that followed omicron\u2019s emergence.<\/p>\n The nation\u2019s official jobless rate is at a record of almost 35%, with a lack of major sports and entertainment events restricting even informal work.<\/p>\n Omicron was identified by scientists in South Africa and Botswana last month, and the region has been the front runner in the latest phase of the global pandemic. Yet there are positive indications that the variant does not lead to the same extent of severe illness and death as previous incarnations, and the South African government has held off toughening containment measures as a result.<\/p>\n
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