Faizel Patel – 28/06/2021

Wits University director of vaccines and infectious diseases Professor Shabir Madhi says the lockdown level 4 restrictions announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa will have a nominal effect on Gauteng.

Professor Madhi was speaking to Radio Islam on Monday about the new lockdown level four measures.

Ramaphosa expressed concern that the Delta variant that caused such destruction in India, has now been found in all of our provinces.

Madhi says Gauteng is yet to reach the peak of the COVID-19 third wave with more to come.

“It’s not going to avoid what’s going to occur over the course of the next two to three weeks. Usually hospitalizations and deaths from COVID lags behind by about two to three weeks compared to what is happening in the community. So we are still going to see an increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths  in Gauteng.”

Professor Madhi says South Africa is not vaccinating citizens fast enough.

“The big problem that South Africa face unfortunately is the absence of vaccination. Going into high levels of restrictions only prolongs what eventually is going to occur and that is a certain number of people needing to get infected before there’s adequate immunity at level of the population which sort of drives down the ability of the virus to transmit.”

Professor Madhi says the third wave of the Coronavirus might wane down earlier in Gauteng compared to other provinces which could be around four to six weeks.

Madhi says the Delta variant could not have been avoided even if government banned travel to and from India because the variant has also spread across the globe.

“If you are wanting to keep it out of your country, then you need to do what countries like Australia did which is literally shut the borders to every country in the world. This variant currently has sort of seminated across eighty-five different countries. So to put restrictions on travels from India, it doesn’t mean that the virus wouldn’t have come in with someone else from another country.”

Professor Madhi says the current COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be more effective against the Delta variant then the Beta variant.

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

Listen to the interview with Professor Shabir Madhi