Johannesburg – Professor Mergan Naidoo from the University of Kwa- Zulu-Natal said South Africans should brace themselves for a bumpy ride ahead, saying infections will shoot up before there is eventually light at the end of the tunnel.
“The third wave is likely to last for about six to eight weeks. Our only solution for now is the upscaling of our vaccination programmes to reduce the number of people who are hospitalised. We must make vaccines more accessible by bringing on board more private health providers. Our vaccination drive must include the opening of facilities on weekends,” she said.
Naidoo added that better control of people who travel frequently to international destinations was also some of the measures that must be immediately adopted by the state.
“Similar strict measures implemented by other countries regulating international travel must apply to us as well. This is the only way we can begin to reach the ambition of herd immunity. We can also see a decline in infections dependent on whether citizens observe the protocols or not.”
Gauteng, undoubtedly the epicentre of the resurgence, presently accounts for an average of 65% of daily new cases.
The Western Cape is also now firmly in a third wave, with an average of 1 969 new Covid-19 cases a day.
The KwaZulu-Natal Coronavirus Command Council on Thursday issued a warning, saying five districts in the province are experiencing the third wave.
Professor Shabir Madhi, the dean of health sciences and director of vaccines and infectious diseases analytics research at Wits told Sunday World that the country had made a suicidal mistake by not using the Astra- Zeneca vaccine.
“The AstraZeneca vaccine’s indirect evidence now indicates that the vaccine is more likely to protect against severe Covid from the Delta variant, even though it did not prevent mild moderate Covid due to the Beta variant,” he said, before adding that more recently, a study published indicates that starting with the AstraZeneca vaccine and boosting with the Pfizer vaccines confers similar immune responses.
“Had SA used the AstraZeneca vaccine rather than focusing its energy on finding another buyer for the vaccine, we would have had at least 1.5-million people that could have derived more immediate protection by having their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine as a booster,” said Madhi.
He added that the other advantage of the AstraZeneca jab was that it was widely manufactured, and that most middle-income countries had invested their resources and energy on the jab. Madhi predicted the resurgence of Covid-19 infections close to December and crossing over to 2022.
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