The Covid-19 infection rate in Gauteng seems to be slowing down, but experts disagree about whether the province has seen the end of the surge or if the peak is yet to come.
The weather is warmer, there is talk that the lockdown will soon ease, and, more importantly, that the Covid-19 peak might have come and gone.
On Thursday the Gauteng Provincial Command Council gave an update on where the province stood in the fight against the Covid-19 virus. As with the Western Cape, South Africa’s most populous province has seen a slowdown in infections. The pessimistic projection will be 20% higher in amplitude than the optimistic scenario and will peak earlier, in November/December.“Now, if, in August, we open the schools, immediately what happens is that the peak basically is brought forward, and the amplitude of the peak, the maximum number of cases basically doubles around 250-270,000, this basically speaks to the fact that the small changes in policy or behaviour do have a very strong impact, in outcome.
“The turnaround could be from saturation or basically the loss of efficiency of transmission. Maybe taxi drivers who were good transmitters have all had it, so taxis are no longer much of a thing when it comes to transmission,” he explains. Recently the US Covid-19 expert Anthony Fauci said that in his 40 years of dealing with viral outbreaks he had never seen a single virus where 20% to 40% of those infected have shown no symptoms.
“And the most interesting figures I’ve seen recently are from Mumbai and Delhi which is very much like we are when it comes to impoverished shantytowns, and a younger population. They found that the population estimate is about 50% have antibodies.”The problem is that as yet no one knows how long those antibodies will protect people from the virus. As with everything else with the virus it is the big unknown.
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