South Africa's third wave of Covid-19 is cresting a peak

Jan

Jan

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Good news about Covid-19 third wave in South Africa

South Africa’s third wave of Covid-19 infections seems to have reached its peak, primarily driven by a decline in cases in Gauteng.

Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at the CSIR, said while the third wave has peaked, the country is not out of the woods yet.

“South Africa may experience a longer tail-end, or even a potential upturn or spike in infections should current events turn into super spreader events,” he said.

The latest figures released by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) revealed that 11,182 new Covid-19 cases had been identified in South Africa in the last 24 hours.
 
rvZA

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Could the lower number of "new infections" not be attributed due to the fact that many, many testing stations were closed yesterday due to riots and millions fewer people were tested? I would not jump towards the virus having reached its peak. I think we are still months away from this variant reaching its peak.
 
pinball wizard

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KikzAzz said:
How much of the decrease is due to the fact that places like Discovery closed their offices and because health care workers doing the tests can't work?
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Did you click on the links in the OP? Look at the 7 day moving average.
 
pinball wizard

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rvZA said:
I think we are still months away from this variant reaching its peak.
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Do you think with your left big toe's ingrown toenail or something?

Months?

The 7 day average as per the link in the OP is quite clear.
 
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Charl456

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Give it a week or 2 for all the protests(looting) at the moment to pass and see how many new cases comes up. but most people protesting(looting)probably wont get tested anyway
 
rvZA

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pinball wizard said:
Do you think with your left big toe's ingrown toenail or something?

Months?

The 7 day average as per the link in the OP is quite clear.
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Of which the riots already took up 4 of those days. This could also explain the dropping 7 day average.
 
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maxxis

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Seems about right. Give it another week to be 100% sure.

The riots will be super spreader events (that hopefully do the job properly) so there is a chance of a rise again.
 
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neoprema

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It had to go down at some point, hopefully this is it. Yes numbers could be slightly skewed due to the riots but for the most part I think people who suspect they have COVID will be tested .

As for those rioting in the streets, I don't know. But I'll be miffed if our tax money has to to pay for their hospital beds in private hospitals when they get COVID and they've destroyed and looted the Govt hospitals
 
rambo919

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Conveniently as riots start the magic virus reaches it's peak.....
 
Johnatan56

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rvZA said:
Could the lower number of "new infections" not be attributed due to the fact that many, many testing stations were closed yesterday due to riots and millions fewer people were tested? I would not jump towards the virus having reached its peak. I think we are still months away from this variant reaching its peak.
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Was going to say this, it's more likely that they hit the ceiling in regards to how many tests they can do, including the fact that riots closed places down will see an even higher decline over the next few days.
So we'll have another peak hit in a week probably, but the question there is whether those rioters would be ones that would go get tested.

The WHO recommends testing to around 5% positivity rate, stats are: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/south-africa?country=ZAF~AUT~GBR~USA~DEU~NLD
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South Africa is at 29%, way above the recommended level, which means it is highly likely that there are a lot of cases that were not tested.
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As a side note, vaccination rate:
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At least the death rate is currently lower, but that's usually a game of catch-up, so will see in two weeks.
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Do note South Africa has a pretty high unaccounted for death rate, but at least fatality rate has lowered a bit, so Delta variant less deadly seems to be holding true for South Africa as well.
neoprema said:
It had to go down at some point, hopefully this is it. Yes numbers could be slightly skewed due to the riots but for the most part I think people who suspect they have COVID will be tested .
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Highly disagree there, most will not test, and if e.g. household infected, you generally only test one. Most developed world everyone in the household will be given a rapid/PCR test as self-administer.
neoprema said:
As for those rioting in the streets, I don't know. But I'll be miffed if our tax money has to to pay for their hospital beds in private hospitals when they get COVID and they've destroyed and looted the Govt hospitals
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It will pay for that, if they can get beds...
 
rvZA

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pinball wizard said:
Less tests also means less people sick or with symptoms... You do know you don't have to go test if you're not sick?
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Less tests also mean less people with R300-R350 for a rapid test or R850 for a proper test.

Less tests also mean less sick people who refuse to be tested.

Less tests also mean closed facilities and people who want to be tested can't.

Everything is mere speculation. One thing is for sure, we are nowhere near the peak of the third wave.
 
chrisc

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Western Cape figures still climbing
11th July - 27298
12th July - 29727
 
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