According to Nicholas Crisp, Department of Health deputy director general and the government official running the national vaccination program, SA’s strict preventative measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus might limit the severity of the virus’s next wave.
The country has fully vaccinated about a third of its adults, and has kept in place prevention measures including a curfew, mandatory face masks and limited gatherings. The percentage of those vaccinated is higher among older citizens. Crisp said in an interview: “If we continue with social distancing, we will still get a fourth wave, but it will be mild. It could be a quarter of the first wave — minimal. People will get infected and get sick and have a lousy Christmas,” but hospitalisations and fatalities will be lower. Still, the abandoning of precautionary measures or the emergence of a new variant could change the outlook and the department was preparing for the worst. SA has had almost 3 million infections and about 90,000 deaths, the worst on the continent.
Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Antony Sguazzin at Moneyweb