SA seeing fifth Covid-19 wave, says health expert

"We are indeed convinced that what we are seeing is the fifth wave," says the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Professor Mosa Moshabela. 

"We have been saying and quite a number of scientists have been saying, that we expect to see a rise in cases towards the end of April and begging of May. 

"And at the end of March, we started to get reports that the wastewater surveillance for Covid 19 was picking up traces in Gauteng and Western Cape, which essentially became the warning alert that numbers of Covid-19 are rising."  

Moshabela's been reacting to the latest pandemic reports by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. 

Over 4 000 new infections were reported daily between Thursday and Saturday. 

Our coronavirus positivity rate's climbed to 16.7 percent. 

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The majority of new cases are from Gauteng, followed by KwaZulu-Natal. 

Moshabela says the spike in new cases indicates the start of the fifth Covid-19 wave. 

"I think the predictions were that the fifth wave will hit us towards the end of April and begging of May and so to us with the trends that we have seen before, we have been through four waves and if you look at the intervals between the waves what we are seeing now is a very consistent trend also coinciding with the winter months." 

However, he says government might not need to reinstate the national state of disaster for now.

"It will take a completely different variant for us to essentially require the reinstatement of the state of disaster. 

"With that in mind, then we expect that the new laws that have been put in place to manage Covid-19 largely under the health act and the minister of health should be adequate should the health system become overburdened, then we may have to think about additional restrictions."