COVID UPDATE BY CHARNDRÉ EMMA KIPPIE
Riding The
Third
wave
Safety measures are in order as South Africa faces the ‘Third Wave’ - here’s what to expect Rapid increase of infections On Sunday 30 May, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on updates surrounding the state of Coronavirus infections in the country. As the public braced itself, in the midst of talks about a third wave of the virus arriving in SA, President Ramaphosa announced that despite all efforts under Alert Level 1, infections have now begun to rapidly increase in many sections of the country. “Over the last seven days, we have seen an average of 3,745 daily new infections”, said President Ramaphosa.
“The proportion of Covid-19 tests that are positive has more than doubled in the last month from around 4 per cent to more than 11 per cent, even as we have increased testing across the country.
The recent surge in new infections is due to the increasing number of social gatherings “The provinces of Free State, Northern Cape, North West and Gauteng have reached the threshold of a third wave of infections...It may only be
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a matter of time before the country as a whole will have entered a third wave.” Turning a setback into a comeback Two months ago the country had felt some relief, with thousands of patients having recovered from the second wave of Covid-19 infections and 3 338 vaccination sites operating across the country. We made significant progress as Phase One of inoculations began and healthcare and frontline workers received their vaccines. Then, more than 325,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in the country in May, with Johnson &
