[imagesource: Getty]
With the events taking place in Ukraine, the battle against COVID-19 has definitely taken a back seat.
We’re still a long way from waving goodbye to the ‘Rona but signs that South Africa has reached a turning point are here.
The stats last night show 1 995 new cases at a 7,5% positivity rate, way down from the mid-30s during December and the height of the Omicron wave. Five deaths were also reported across the past 48 hours.
We know that the number of COVID-19 deaths is far higher than the official death toll, based on excess death figures, and the same is true for infections.
That’s backed up by a Wits Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit study, led by Prof Shabir Madhi and published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
This from TimesLIVE:
More than half of children in SA have had Covid-19, as have about 80% of adults older than 50…
[The study] indicates that the pandemic has reached a definite “turning point”, said Madhi.
It is the first peer-reviewed and published study of data to demonstrate decoupling between infections and severe Covid-19 disease and death…
By the time the Omicron variant reared its head, according to Madhi and the team, “South Africans had extensive community immunity because of high infection rates in the first three waves, as well as vaccinations”.
The study found that as little as 10% of those who became infected are confirmed and counted as official cases.
Discovery released similar infection figures in August last year, which may have been a touch high at the time but have since been borne out.
Increased vaccination rates, as well as immunity from the previous three COVID-19 waves, meant that the Omicron wave contributed just 10% of total hospitalisations and 3% of deaths:
“The study findings indicate that we have reached a turning point in the Covid-19 pandemic, even in countries with a modest uptake of vaccines, but where there has been a high force of natural infection which has resulted in a huge loss of lives,” said Madhi.
He said that in SA, 490 people per 100,000 had died of Covid-19.
This puts SA in the top 10 countries globally of Covid-19 fatality rates.
That’s based on the actual death toll being around three times higher with excess deaths factored in.
According to the study, unpacked further on The Conversation by Madhi himself, South Africa is moving into the convalescent phase of the COVID pandemic.
In layman’s terms, that’s the recovery phase:
As such, South Africa needs to recaliberate its approach to the pandemic and to start managing it as we would do for other respiratory infections which too cause large number of hospitalisations and deaths.
…the world is no longer at “code red”. And it’s time to rebuild livelihoods, economies and all other facets of life that were affected over the past two years. This is particularly true in fragile low and middle income countries.
Perhaps it’s time President Ramaphosa finally declared an end to our national state of disaster and adjusted the COVID-19 rules that remain in place.
This would allow schools, for example, to do away with measures that are no longer needed:
There is NO need for children to still be wearing masks in schools. Besides them usually not wearing it correctly( which is very uncomfortable for prolonged period) most of the time, the type of masks they use provide little protection in preventing or acquiring infections.
— Shabir Madhi (@ShabirMadh) March 2, 2022
The current state of disaster runs until March 15.
We don’t even need an 8PM address, Cyril. Just send out an email.
[sources:timeslive&conversation]
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