The Symptoms of APOCALYPSE VARIANT Are Scratchy Throat, Dry Cough, and Mild Muscle Ache — Says Doctor Who Discovered It

The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.

Dr Angelique Coetzee said she was first alerted to the possibility of a new variant when patients in her busy private practice in the capital Pretoria started to come in earlier this month with Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense.

They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

South African Dr Angelique Coetzee first raised the alarm over the Omicron variant and says the rest of the world is over-reacting.

"Patients I've seen had mild symptoms and recovered. None were admitted and no oxygen was needed. The hype makes no sense to at all."@JuliaHB1 pic.twitter.com/c14pbzveN6

— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) November 29, 2021

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” said Dr Coetzee, a GP for 33 years who chairs the South African Medical Association alongside running her practice.

On November 18, when four family members all tested positive for Covid-19 with complete exhaustion, she informed the country’s vaccine advisory committee.

She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated. [In a country where 76% are unvaccinated.]

“We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,” Dr Coetzee says.

Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.

“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said.

South African demographics are very different from those in the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over the age of 65. This means that older individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus may take some time to present.

The UK, US, the EU and Israel have all suspended travel to and from South Africa and the five surrounding countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The UK Government added Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia to the travel red list on Sunday.

The Western travel ban has provoked anger among South Africans, with many claiming that they are being punished for having outstanding research institutions and being transparent about their findings.

Source: The Telegraph

Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, told AFP she had seen around 30 patients over the past 10 days who tested positive for COVID-19, but had unfamiliar symptoms.

“What brought them to the surgery was this extreme tiredness,” she said, speaking from Pretoria, where she practices.

She said this was unusual for younger patients.

Most were men aged under 40. Just under half were vaccinated.

They also had mild muscle aches, a “scratchy throat” and dry cough, she said. Only a few had a slightly high temperature. [LOL. You don’t even get a fever.]

These very mild symptoms were different from those in other variants, which gave more severe symptoms.

Coetzee alerted health officials of a “clinical picture that doesn’t fit Delta” — South Africa’s dominant variant — on November 18, when she received the first seven of her 30-odd patients.

Source: AFP

"Round about the 18 November, I all of a sudden encountered unusual symptoms" in a patient who was "extremely tired for the past two days"

Dr Angelique Coetzee explains how she became aware of the Omicron coronavirus variant
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— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 28, 2021