The resurgence of Covid cases in South Africa and signs of a possible fifth wave of infections will test South Africa’s government and the country’s new pandemic restrictions, says Business Leadership South Africa chief executive Busi Mavuso.
“There is some risk here – the previous waves saw many variations of restrictions as we tried as a country to calibrate our response. There were clear missteps that we have learned from. That learning must be fully absorbed into how we use the new regulations to deal with the pandemic.” “This high level of protection has been credited with the relatively low impact of the omicron wave in terms of deaths and hospitalisations. So in determining what measures we need to fight the new wave, we can assume it will be less impactful than earlier waves and that, therefore we can avoid measures that damage our fragile economic recovery.”
However, he noted that there had been a ‘massive decoupling of infections and severe disease materialising’, with the country much better positioned than previous waves due to its higher immunity levels.