Gauteng showing signs of emerging from third wave of Covid-19, says prof

Gauteng has showed a decline in Covid-19 cases and might be slowly getting over the peak of the third wave, Prof Salim Abdool Karim said on Friday.

Abdool Karim, former chair of the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, said the third wave was more than twice the peak of the first and second waves in the country.

“Gauteng has really been through a rough patch, but now that they are on the decline, the number of cases will start rapidly going down,” he said.

According to statistics, Gauteng has showed a 21% decrease in the past week.

Cases in the Western Cape, the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga are still increasing. Limpopo saw the biggest increase at 41%, while Mpumalanga showed a 26% increase and KwaZulu-Natal 21%.

Abdool Karim said KwaZulu-Natal was already on the increase even before the violence and widespread protests that erupted in the province.

“We expect it to continue going up and because of the [unrest] situation in KZN, the testing has come to a very slow pace and they are identifying very few cases.

“By next week, when things are opening up and public transport becomes available, the hospitals and laboratories are back to functioning, we will start seeing the climb again and we don’t know how far it is going to climb.”

Abdool Karim warned that there could be a peak in the next two weeks if cases rose rapidly in the three coastal provinces — the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. However, “We would pretty much expect most of the provinces to have hit their peak and start coming down by the end of the month ... Western Cape will peak by the end of the month.”

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