SA provinces on ‘red alert’ as Covid-19 rages on

Many provinces in South Africa were officially at “red alert” as Covid-19 continues to rage.

Acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane told a briefing yesterday that the rest of the country would inevitably experience the same tsunami of infections as was happening in Gauteng.

Epidemiologist Dr Jo Barnes said she had no reason to believe other provinces would escape the latest upsurge.

“The only differences that we can expect are the timing of those peaks and how high those peaks will be,” Barnes noted.

“If there are provinces with adelay in their peak case numbers, that will mean the country will have prolonged exposure to Covid-19 cases, making the outbreak even more difficult to control.”

Kubayi-Ngubane said the health authorities were worried about Limpopo, where the test positivity rate was running at 42% – the highest in the country.

She also said they were very worried about the rise in hospitalisations, which was putting a lot of strain on health facilities in Gauteng.

“The private health hospitals are currently operating at more than 100% capacity and public health hospitals are edging closer to full capacity,” she said.

During the briefing, Prof Glenda Gray presented the latest evidence that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was effective against the beta variant and even more so against the delta variant.

“The vaccine is 82% effective in protecting against severe and critical Covid-19 caused by variants and works better over time against both variants,” said Gray.

J&J vaccine does not need a booster shot at this stage.

“The vaccine has shown durability, meaning that eight months after vaccination it continues to work well to protect against Covid-19,” she added.

According to Kubayi-Ngubane, more than 120 000 people were vaccinated in the past 24 hours.

“The vaccination of teachers is progressing well and we have so far vaccinated just over 300 000 teachers,” she said.

“We had more teachers registering in KwaZulu-Natal, followed by Gauteng.”

Meanwhile, News24 reports that more than 354 000 people who are over 50 registered for vaccination on the first day of registration.

Registrations on the electronic vaccination data system opened on Thursday and the health department said it aimed to administer the first doses of the vaccine to people over-50s from 15 July.

Health department deputy director-general Dr Nicholas Crisp said the registrations were split between those with private insurance and those without. Even though registrations only opened at 1pm on Thursday, more than 7 300 people in their 50s received their jabs on Thursday, Crisp said.

“There is evidence from elsewhere in the world that suggests when this over-50 group starts registering, they will bring the older elderly with them to vaccination sites.

“We will be monitoring to see if this will be the trend in our country,” Crisp said.

About 4.8 million people fall in this age category and at least 3.3 million of them will need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. From there, the department will vaccinate the seven million people who are over 40.

As of Thursday, 3 155 717 people had been vaccinated, with 129 081 doses administered in the past 24-hour cycle.