Covid-19 third wave officially in four provinces, warn experts

As SA recorded a peak in the number of new Covid-19 infections in more than four months and the number of positive daily results steadily increased, experts warned that the country had technically entered the third wave.

According to senior lecturer from the department of global health at Stellenbosch University Dr Jo Barnes, the present buildup of cases strongly indicates that a new wave of infections is starting to unfold in the country.

“The virus permeates an area in a stealthy manner and by the time significant numbers of seriously ill patients present to healthcare facilities, the wave is well established,” she said.

“This wave will hit all the provinces since no province has anywhere near the required number of properly vaccinated people.”

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Wednesday said four provinces had already entered a third wave of Covid-19 infections – the Northern Cape, Free State, North West and, most recently, Gauteng.

Barnes said the provinces that have not yet registered high numbers of cases are not doing anything differently – they are simply a little farther back in the queue and their numbers will also go up soon.

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“The places where a new wave starts may simply be where most of the cases were first diagnosed,” she said.

“In the first wave, the Western Cape was an early hotspot. It was suspected that this province, with its large influx of tourists from abroad, had the virus circulating before it was widespread. But in a short while the disease spread to all corners of the country.”

She also noted that the only effective coping strategy is to vaccinate at least 70% of the susceptible population and get people to change risk-taking behaviour.

“Unfortunately, no-one can predict how long this new wave will last and how many cases will be infected. I fear that it may be quite serious since winter has set in,” she said.

NICD executive director Adrian Puren said the percentage of South Africans testing positive for Covid-19 daily had been steadily increasing.

“This means that the seven-day moving average of case incidence has reached 30% of the previous peak in these provinces,” Puren said.

“We are also seeing sustained increases in case incidence in districts in other provinces.”

Speaking on SABC’s Morning Live yesterday, Puren also said the situation in the country could technically be described as a third wave as the whole country had reached the threshold.

“The overall positivity is at 12.7% nationally, but if you could allocate it by province the positive rate could be higher,” he said.

“In Gauteng it’s about 17%, Free State is about 15%, Northern Cape 23% and North West 18%.”

As of Wednesday, the total number of detected Covid-19 cases in SA stood at 1 675 013 with 5 782 new cases recorded. Another 110 Covid-19-related deaths were reported, bringing the total number of related deaths to 56 711.