At the current rate, South Africa is at risk of going down India’s Covid-19 deadly path, with experts saying South Africans are exhibiting the same risky behaviour such as large gatherings and poor preparation, while risking the proliferation of more variants .
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This against the backdrop of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) Covid-19 Modelling Consortium warning that a third wave is imminent, in the modelling report update released on Monday.
The update shows that SA is likely to experience a third wave that peaks below the second, provided there are no new variants, with new cases cresting two to three months after transmission begins to increase.
Though the Consortium provided no estimate on when the third wave was likely to hit, experts believe it could be at the end of May, into June.
“…unfortunately I do fear that we will go into a third wave. The vaccine roll out has been extremely slow which has been mainly due to the fact that we just do not have the vaccines in the country,” Professor Glenda Davison, head of the biomedical sciences department at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, said.
Davison said infection rates were currently low but that complacency, leading to large gatherings, will result in the spread of the virus. She said the current proposed vaccine roll-out plan is not bad but access to the vaccines has been problematic.
“In this aspect I believe we could have done better,” she said.
Davison explained that the situation in India was extremely tragic, despite being one of the biggest manufacturers of vaccines, the number of the population who have received the vaccine was low.
An undertaker carries a wooden log amidst burning pyres of the victims who died of Covid-19 coronavirus at an open air crematorium set up for the coronavirus victims inside a defunct granite quarry on the outskirts of Bangalore on May 1, 2021. (Photo by Manjunath Kiran / AFP)
“Again this wave was started by large events with many people not adhering to the prevention methods. The chances of this happening in SA is high and, if I examine the statistics, some provinces have already had increases in infection rates. We cannot become complacent and the vaccine rollout should now be our main priority,” she said.
Stellenbosch University epidemiologist Dr Jo Barnes, echoed Davison’s sentiments, saying her assessment was that SA is at serious risk of following in India’s footsteps.
“…many of the factors causing problems in India are developing or already in place for us as well: a more transmissible local variant that developed, late development of roll-out plans, government yielding under pressure to allow larger gatherings, poor procurement of vaccine stocks, poor preparation for essentials like oxygen and medicines, very bad health care system, very poor communication with the population regarding the status of the pandemic over time and irrational control measures — the list goes on” she said.
She said India’s attitude “Indian exceptionalism”, the belief that India had somehow conquered the virus after the first wave, and that it was now downhill towards normality from then on contributed to their situation.
A worker pushes a trolley that carried the body of patient who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus into an furnace during the cremation at an electric crematorium in Allahabad on April 27, 2021. (Photo by SANJAY KANOJIA / AFP)
Barnes said these were ideas propagated by the government and politicians, leading to people ignoring all sensible precautions.
“Denial is the Covid-19 virus’s best friend. The virus invades an area in a stealthy manner and by the time the first cases appear, it is too late to stop the spread,” she said.
Barnes explained that since viruses mutate regularly, with some with potential to make people more ill or to transmit more easily, more variants should be expected.
“…we need to stop this mind-set that soon we will all be back to ‘business as usual’. This virus is going to become endemic and we will have to learn to cope with it while science works on treatment and prevention. We have made remarkable strides but we are not out of the woods yet,” she added.
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