JOHANNESBURG (AP) South Africas noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the countrys 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 Africas 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 center of this wave, indicates that we are past the peak, Marta Nunes, senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics department of the University of Witwatersrand, told The Associated Press.

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.

Gauteng province saw its numbers start sharply rising in mid-November. Scientists doing genetic sequencing quickly identified the new, highly mutated omicron variant that was announced to the world on Nov. 25.