RYAN NOACH: A third wave can be avoided — but it could also be more deadly
Preventing viral spread between people limits chances for Covid-19 to mutate, and protects us from infection with any new, highly transmissible variants that may not yet be documented
Will SA experience a third wave of Covid-19 infection? If so, when and how severely? The country experienced the first wave in April 2020, with the Western Cape affected first, which abated by September 2020, with Gauteng being the last province to settle. A devastating second wave followed three months later linked to the migratory patterns of the holiday period and, as the evidence demonstrates, spurred on by super-spreader events in late November and early December. Now we face concern that a third wave could hit us sometime after Easter, coinciding with autumn and potentially compounding the morbidity of the annual flu season.
In recent weeks Covid-19 cases have spiked across Europe to above the risk threshold of 10 new infections per 100,000 people per day. Several European countries — including the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Greece, Poland and France — have returned to lockdown measures as third waves of infection have set in, fuelled by the highly transmissible B117 v...
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