Learn to live with Covid-19, say experts
LEARNING to live a normal life where Covid-19 is present is the forecast for the future by local experts.
At the end of last year, the government took the decision to drop the curfew that had been in place since the initial implementation of the country’s state of disaster lockdown in March 2020. An international trend has begun where the easing of Covid-19 restrictions is taking effect, bringing with it a glimpse of normal life.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said now is the time to live with Covid-19, as the world has done with the flu.
According to data from our National Health Department and the National Institute For Communicable Diseases (NICD), the number of cases has dropped. Additionally, the death rate from the Omicron wave is about one-10th that of the Delta variant.
Vaccinology Professor Shabir Madhi of Wits University believes it was pragmatic of government to lessen the severity of lockdown restrictions.
“The new approach has an obvious dissimilarity of imposing higher levels of restrictions as cases mounted. The government has taken note and are focusing on whether health facilities are endangered, instead of harsher lockdowns,” he said.
Madhi said the new approach is due to higher levels of population immunity.
“A serosurvey done in Gauteng before the Omicron wave revealed that 72% of people had been infected
over the course of the first three waves. Sero-positivity was 79% and 93% in Covid-19 unvaccinated and vaccinated people older than 50 years.”
Fareed Abdullah, director of Aids and TB Research at the SA Medical Research Council, said the goal of the lockdown was to relieve the pressure and strain the pandemic had on the healthcare system.
“The death rate was on par with deaths caused by seasonal influenza pre-covid of between 10 000 (and) 11000 annually. It needs to be considered relative to other preventable deaths. Such as TB, with an estimated 58 000 deaths in 2019,” he said.
Abdullah added that it was impossible to predict characteristics of future
variants; however, the Omicron wave was an indicator that immunity to mitigate severe disease and death was achieved.
Regardless, Jonny Myers, the director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at UCT, said there were still risks, and caution should be exercised.
“The unpredictable nature of new variants is a concern that would (be) the result of a viral evolution as opposed to lockdown restrictions. The country and all its institutions and citizens need to prepare to get back to previous life.”
Chief of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the pandemic was far from over.