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Gauteng is said to have entered its second Covid-19 wave.
Piero Cruciatti / AFP via Getty Images
- The SACMC says that Gauteng is the latest province to join KZN, Eastern Cape and Western Cape in a second wave of infections.
- The consortium made the statement during the launch of its Epidemic Explorer public dashboard, which contains the latest Covid-19 data available.
- The consortium hopes the data will help the public make better decisions related to Covid-19 and its spread.
South Africa’s economic center, Gauteng, is the latest province to officially find itself in a second wave of infections, the SA Covid-19 Modeling Consortium (SACMC) said on Tuesday.
This was revealed by SACMC Professor Gesine Meyer-Rath in a Zoom media briefing during the launch of their dashboard for Covid-19 monitoring.
The SACMC and the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) launched the Epidemic Explorer panel, which was developed to help the public understand the risks of Covid-19 “and make informed decisions.”
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The dashboard includes figures and analysis used to monitor the epidemic at the district and provincial level, and to identify second waves.
Meyer-Rath explained that the second wave was defined by the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19 in early November.
A second wave is when the seven-day average number of cases rises to 30% of the peak of the first wave, he said, adding:
“The peak of the first wave was around July 18, at which time we had [over 12 000] cases. The threshold has since been defined as 30% [which is 3 680 cases]. That threshold was first crossed on December 5 when we had 3,683 new cases, so again, this is the seven-day average.
“At that time, we reported to the health minister and ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, and that information was widely disseminated.”
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Meyer-Rath said that 30% was a definition “that is not necessarily ours, but is based on the analysis we contributed to.”
“As you can see, the cases increased a lot. The latest case data that we have from December 13, for an average of seven days, is 6,845 new cases. [nationally]. “
He added that an average of seven days was not from Monday to Sunday, but that he worked in a general period of seven days.
“The reason for the second wave at the national level is that several provinces have entered the same type of scenario in the second wave in a row. We have all heard of the Eastern Cape, which reached the threshold at the end of September. The Western Cape did the same, but KZN has also hit that threshold in recent days.
“In the most recent overnight data … [it] shows that Gauteng is officially in the second wave and has passed that threshold. Four provinces in total have passed the threshold, which means that we no longer need a localized response. As a country, we have to do things differently. “
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Meyer-Rath said they hoped the information available would help the public make better decisions.
“We strongly believe, as a consortium, that the public needs this data to make decisions, especially at this time of year, about travel and risk. We, as a consortium, do not [say] let anyone change their travel plans; if they can, that’s totally up to them.
“What is really important when people travel, [is that] they are aware of the level of risk that exists at the point where they are going. “
Vaccine, second wave projections
When asked if they could publish updated models with vaccine costs, cases and distribution, Meyer-Rath said “it’s difficult for us to make promises at this point.”
“We will start with the vaccine model. We have done quite a bit of vaccine modeling. We are part of the ministerial advisory committee modeling workflow and the target population workflow. We will model as needed to make these decisions. When decisions need to be made , we will have data to support them.
“[But] We cannot promise that they will be fully in the public eye as soon as we are done with the results. “
He said the models had to go through several processes before being made public.
“That’s because there is a level of peer review within the structures of the ministerial advisory committee and the health department. In order to make decisions in a timely manner, those means are the most important to us and the ones we need to prioritize.
“However, we will endeavor to make that data public as soon as we can.”
He said one of his main tasks was planning the revival.
“For us, the main task for next year is to estimate the size of the resurgence and the additional waves and the distribution of it, and that that informs our vaccine model because it is hugely important in terms of estimating the effectiveness of the vaccine, especially different places and different populations “.
Dr. Sheetal Silal, also from SACMC, said that “they think a lot and do a lot of research when they decide to publish modeled projections and how robust those projections are.”
“Are they representative of the current situation [and] What are the known data at that time?
“The modeling of the second wave and how long it will last and how bad it would be are not just problems that we are dealing with in SA. In fact, it is a global phenomenon. These are discussions that happen all over the world.”
