South Africa is in the grip of another resurgence of COVID-19. Gauteng province, the country’s economic hub, where 25% of the population live, is the epicenter. But infection rates are expected to rise in other major provinces as well. To ease pressure on the health system and slow the rate of transmission, President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced tighter lockdown restrictions.
Shabir Madhi is the director of the South African Medical Research Council Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit and co-founder and co-director of the African Leadership Initiative for Vaccinology Expertise at the University of the Witwatersrand. He spoke to The Conversation Africa to shed some light on South Africa’s situation.
Based on the limited sequencing that’s been done, it appears that the Delta variant has emerged as the dominant variant in the latest resurgence. According to the latest research, it is much more transmissible and possibly also more virulent compared to previous variants.
The previous COVID-19 resurgence, which peaked in January 2021, was dominated by the Beta variant.
The current resurgence in South Africa differs by province, and even within a particular province. Gauteng, the country’s economic hub and one of nine provinces, is probably two to three weeks ahead of what will likely be experienced particularly in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Kwazulu Natal provinces.
In Gauteng the data show that the daily rate of COVID-19 infections in the current wave is two and a half times higher than at the peak of the first or second wave. Unfortunately, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement on Sunday of stricter lockdown measures is unlikely to stop the trend.
We are likely to see many more COVID-19 cases being hospitalised as well as people dying from COVID-19 in the next two to three weeks in Gauteng. This is because severe disease usually lags behind infections in the community by about two to three weeks.
But, looking at the trajectory of the outbreak in India, we can expect the number of cases to start gradually decreasing after that.
To a large extent it depends on whether people adhere to the regulations, particularly avoiding indoor gatherings in poorly ventilated spaces and ensuring they wear face masks when indoors or in crowded spaces.