South Africans urged to vaccinate as new Covid wave on its way

Although SA is not yet out of the woods with Covid, experts say the worst is over and, based on experience with omicron, the risk of dying has declined 20- fold if infected.

South Africans on Monday woke up to news that they should brace themselves for another wave of Covid infections in late September or early October.

Next Covid wave

However, professor of vaccinology at Wits University Shabir Madhi said the magnitude of the next wave “will probably be lower than what SA experienced with other variants, as we saw with the fifth wave due to sublineages of omicron”.

He said: “Despite the modest success of vaccine rollout in SA, 90% of people have developed immunity which protects reasonably well against severe disease due to all variants that have arisen to date.

The immunity can be enhanced by vaccines, especially in those at high risk of progressing to severe disease.”

Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Prof Glenda Davison agreed with Madhi and said Covid was not going away soon and “somehow we as a country” can’t increase our vaccine rate.

“Now the BA5 variant is the most dominant globally and we in SA have already experienced this,” she said.

“I have not heard of any new variants at the moment but it is predicted that any new ones will probably be more infectious and will most likely be better at evading the immune response.” Davison said, however, it was also predicted the next wave will be less severe.

“So, although we will probably go through another wave, I believe the hospitalisation and deaths will be reduced. “The best way to combat it will, of course, be to go and get the booster vaccines.”

Vaccination

Virologist Barry Schoub told eNCA that SA’s biggest problem was low vaccine rates, saying the country needed to “increase it quite urgently because we’re not out of the woods yet”.

He added: “It is for that reason that people who are not vaccinated should go and get vaccinated. Covid is not over,” he added.

Asked if there were any new variants which could possibly drive the next wave, senior lecturer from the department of global health at Stellenbosch University, Dr Jo Barnes said nobody can reliably predict what any possible new variant of Sars CoV-2 will be like.

“There is no way to determine in which way any possible new variant will change the risks associated with the disease,” Barnes said.

“When considering any possible new wave in that way, it is not wise to rely on new variants being more benign and simply hoping that the pandemic will “go away” by banking on new variants turning out to be less dangerous.”

ALSO READ: Companies scrap mandatory vaccine policies – will dismissed employees be reinstated?