DURBAN - HEALTH MEC Nomagugu Simelane has reiterated that the Covid-19 situation in the province was dire.
However, World Health Organization (WHO) representative in South Africa Dr Owen Kaluwa said although SA accounted for a large proportion of overall cases, it has been seeing a decrease in new cases in recent weeks. At the end of June, the country was seeing nearly 134 000 cases each week, but in the week ending August 15, there were about 72 100 new cases.
Simelane said in the past few months they kept saying the province had not entered the third wave, and it had appeared that if the province entered the third wave, it would not be affected a lot and have a small rise in numbers.
However, numbers increased over the past few weeks from about 1 400 new Covid-19 cases to more than 3 000. On Friday, the province recorded 4 198 new Covid-19 cases, and since August 12 the province started recording more than 3 000 new cases. Before that, new cases were between a low of 981 and a high of 2 673.
“We know that, perhaps because we talk about Covid-19 on a daily basis, people may feel like they’re growing ‘tired’ of consuming this information. In the past two weeks, we have seen an exponential growth in the number of new daily infections. This is extremely concerning,” Simelane said.
The department always had a problem with infection rates in eThekwini, she said. In the past three weeks numbers in eThekwini had grown. There were a number of contributing factors.
“eThekwini as a metro has a large population. Therefore, there will be a lot of infections. It is the centre of the province’s economy. Trading continues as normal,” Simelane explained.
Prior to entering the third wave, eThekwini had a lot of infections, but those were about 38% in the province. Now they were reaching 50%. For almost two weeks, the metro was contributing 47% to the province’s total.
She added that scientists had explained that the Delta variant was more transmissible and very infectious. That could be seen in how pupils were being infected.
WHO Regional Office for Africa Pillar Lead for Case Management, Dr John Appiah, said children and adolescents were more likely to present with a mild or asymptomatic infection and were much less likely than adults to be hospitalised or have fatal outcomes. But the risk of transmission among children still existed and they could still develop severe disease, which could result in death.
“Children with underlying health conditions like obesity, asthma, HIV, cancer, diabetes or sickle cell disease are at a higher risk of developing a severe disease and possibly dying if they also contract Covid-19,” Appiah said.
Public health measures were the best defence to protect children, he said. Proper mask-wearing, physical distancing and hand hygiene should be practised in and outside of school. It was also important that sick children stayed home and classrooms should be properly ventilated.
This month, the death of two pupils, 12-year-old Katelyn Pillay from Wembley Primary School in Phoenix and 9-year-old Shanika Balsarang from Acaciaville Primary School in Ladysmith, from Covid-19-related complications, shook the province.
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