A Special Adviser to the Minister of Health says South Africa's slowed down infection rate of COVID-19 is unprecedented and the result of governments rapid response.
Professor Salim Abdul Karrim said we now have a different trajectory than seen anywhere else in the world.
He said South Africa had been braced for a dramatic exponential increase in Covid-19 infections, once the disease arrived in the country in March with citizens who
had travelled abroad, and this was the case in the fortnight after the first case was confirmed.
During this period, infections followed the same, predictable trajectory evidenced in the United Kingdom and other countries now battling severe outbreaks of the
novel coronavirus.
However, on March 26, the day before a strict national lockdown came into effect, the average number of new daily infections slowed to 76. In the second week of the
lockdown, the average daily increase dropped to 67 new infections.
The government has quantified the slowdown as a tenfold drop in the infection rate once the lockdown was implemented.
Abdul Karrim said this picture defied predictions on the pandemic for which government had braced. These were that the first wave of infections in travellers, and the second wave of people infected through contact with them would be followed by a third wave in which community infection spread like wildfire.
"We are just not seeing that community-level transmission at this point. It is there but it is not spreading in that way that we expected," he said, describing the current
trajectory as "unique".
Abdul Karrim said there was a possibility that the emerging atypical picture could be attributed to inadequate levels of testing but this was unlikely given the concerted
increase in screening and testing for symptoms and infections.
By Monday, the total number of tests conducted stood at 83,663.
He explained that the fact that the rate eased on the date the lockdown began, could not be attributed to the lockdown itself, because of the two-week gestation period for a new infection. Instead, the drop could be considered the result of measures the government took in the fortnight before the lockdown, restrictions on travel and large gatherings and contact tracing.
The direct impact of the lockdown will now reveal itself in the coming weeks, he added.
Lifting of lockdown
Abdul Karrim stressed that lifting or easing the lockdown, which has been extended until the end of April, could see the trajectory turn and the exponential increase the state had feared, materialise.
"Once we end the lockdown, and we are going to have to end it at some point, we have 57 million people [and] we have no immunity, we have no vaccine, we have no treatment," he said.
In terms of epidemiological modelling, the point at which restrictions could be eased would be an average daily increase in infections of 44 new cases, he argued.
Abdul Karrim said the special attention had to be paid to the greater Cape Town, Johannesburg and eThekwini areas, where there was a risk of a rapid upswing in community transmission, and to protect the country's elderly citizens, who were at the greatest risk, along with those whose immune systems have been compromised by HIV and tuberculosis.
He mooted the possibility of a selective form of lockdown that would see the elderly remain confined, possibly in a voluntary fashion, until September.
By Monday, South Africa had recorded 27 COVID-19 fatalities and 2,272 infections, according to the latest figures given by Mkhize.
- African News Agency (ANA)
