Winter will tell if Covid-19 is under control, says Prof Glenda Gray
President of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Professor Glenda Gray says the winter season will tell whether the Covid-19 pandemic is under control.
Gray’s comments come a'id growing concerns that the country could be heading into fifth wave in a couple of month' time.
“It will be very important for us to see what happens during winter months whether the wave is controllable or is out of control. We are hopeful that we are moving into endemic phase but that will be determined by winter months when we normally have surges and see what variants evolve to be.
“You may see some uptick in transmissions as people get back to work and classrooms but certainly will not spark a new wave. It will be a slight uptick, but we are quite sure that the fourth wave has passed.”
She says so far, the most transmissible variant has been Omicron.
“We watch sequencing on cases that occur in our country, and we do a random selection so that we can keep an eye of what’s happening with evolution of variants. Omicron has replaced all the other variant but there are some low-grade variants that the country is watching to see whether that stops the increase as well.”
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