Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world on Wednesday

The latest:

South Africa's noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country's dramatic Omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.

Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint — far from conclusive yet — that Omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike. 

South Africa has been at the forefront of the Omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.

After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on Thursday, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng province — South Africa's most populous with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria — the decrease started earlier and has continued. 

"The drop in new cases nationally combined with the sustained drop in new cases seen here in Gauteng province, which for weeks has been the centre of this wave, indicates that we are passed the peak," Marta Nunes, senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics department of the University of Witwatersrand, told The Associated Press.

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"It was a short wave ... and the good news is that it was not very severe in terms of hospitalizations and deaths," she said. It is "not unexpected in epidemiology that a very steep increase, like what we saw in November, is followed by a steep decrease."

Worldwide, the variant has been detected in at least 89 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

-From The Associated Press, last updated at 5:30 a.m. ET

For more details on how COVID-19 is impacting your community — including hospital data and the latest on restrictions — check out the coverage from CBC newsrooms around the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to deliver an update on COVID-19 today as the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant is prompting more provinces to reinstate and tighten public health restrictions.

Trudeau is expected to speak at noon ET alongside Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo and several ministers.

The update comes amid a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, with Omicron now the dominant coronavirus variant in several provinces.