File picture. A Covid-19 patient waiting to be admitted at the field hospital by the entrance to Steve Biko Academic Hospital, 11 January 2020, Pretoria. Picture: Jacques Nelles
With the Easter holidays over, Dr Jo Barnes, a senior lecturer at the department of health systems and public health at Stellenbosch University, has raised concerns regarding the number of Covid-19 tests that were conducted.
She said not enough measures were taken to detect the early stages of the country’s third wave of the coronavirus. There were two aspects to the problem.
“We need much increased testing that is more easily accessed by the general population in order to keep track of hotspots and to act timeously when cases rise. And we need to get better cooperation from the people to go for testing when they detect possible symptoms of Covid-19,” she said.
“In order to get cooperation, a lot more is needed to be done to inform the public about the disease, ordinary methods of prevention and its symptoms and consequences.
“Encouraging the public to obey the rules for the common good is not a once-off affair. It needs to be kept up in innovative ways to avoid ‘information fatigue’. This is not being done on a countrywide scale.”
Barnes said there were chances the infection rate would go up since people spent the Easter holidays with their family members and were probably in crowded places.
“The chances are high that we will see an increase in cases. The only question is by how many the cases will rise. The time to try and limit the risk of a new wave is right now,” she said.
Even though South Africa is in autumn, flu cases were surprisingly low.
“When the cold weather sets in, people spend much more time indoors and come into closer contact with more people. This is an ideal situation for the spread of respiratory viruses.
“Interestingly, the seasonal flu has been much below the usual levels for some time now. The theory is that the ordinary precautions of mask-wearing, hand-washing, maintaining a safe distance and avoiding crowded places helped to keep numbers low.”
“When a new, more infective variant occurs, the upsurge in case numbers can be larger than expected.”
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