South Africa is likely to have entered a new wave of Covid-19 sooner than predicted, according to the country’s health minister, who noted that the number of new infections and hospitalizations has increased fast over the previous two weeks.
The BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant, which were dominant in the country’s previous wave of the virus, have been responsible for the surge in new cases over the last year.
According to any interpretation, it does seem that we may have really entered into the fifth wave considerably earlier than previously thought “Joe Phaahla, the Minister of Health, said this on Friday at a televised news conference.
He said that authorities would be keeping a close eye on the situation over the next several days to see whether the surge continues, which would indicate the start of a new wave.
The number of new illnesses in the nation has increased to several thousand every day, from a few hundred only a few weeks ago.
It is now estimated that three South African regions — Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape — account for 85 percent of new infections, with the positive rate in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal exceeding 20 percent, according to the researcher.
According to Dr. Waasila Jassat of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, hospitalizations from new cases are growing, although they are still at a low level compared to previous years.
“We are beginning to witness a little increase in hospital admissions in both the private and public sectors,” says the author “Jassat expressed himself.
‘We’ve seen a significant spike in hospital admissions since approximately the 17th of April,’ says the hospital.
Since the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, South Africa has had the largest number of infections in Africa, accounting for more than a quarter of the continent’s total of 11.4 million cases.
Despite the fact that more than 252,000 individuals have died in South Africa as a result of the virus, the figures are believed to be significantly higher when the number of extra fatalities documented after the pandemic is compared to the same periods before the pandemic is taken into account.
The adult population of South Africa has been immunised to a level of little more than 44 percent.
