Trajectory of third Covid wave remains unpredictable, says Phaahla

He said the third wave, which is largely driven by the Delta variant, remains very different to the first and second waves.

Phaahla briefed the media on Friday morning on government's efforts to curb the Covid-19 pandemic and the national rollout of vaccines.

Over the last seven days, the national positivity rate has averaged around 20%, which is much higher that the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 5%.

“The case trajectory had showed an initial steep downward trend since 9 July. However, since 13 August cases started to trend upwards. This fluctuation can also be seen in individual provinces such as the Western Cape, Northern Cape and the Free State especially.

“The encouraging thing is that Gauteng, which was the first and significant epicentre, has sustained a continuous downward trend.”

Phaahla said the positivity rate in the Western Cape and Northern Cape remains much higher at 27% and 30% respectively.

“A very worrying trend is that in both provinces there has been younger people, between the ages of 10 to 19 years, testing positive. While some clusters can be traced to school opening there are also indications of social activities such as partying without precautions.

“What this means is that the third wave is dragging longer and in the absence of new variants it can only mean that more people are not taking precautions. The risk is that by the time we hit the fourth wave driven by a new variant we could be found still in medium trend of the third wave, which will mean very little break for our health workers,” he said.

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