According to the chief executive of Discovery, Adrian Gore, a fifth Covid wave will likely be less severe when compared to previous waves. But nonetheless, the group states that the possible wave will still be treated with caution.
New Covid wave can be expected for May
According to Gore, South Africa’s previous Covid waves have all followed similar patterns when looking at duration and time. They have also found that the peak between one wave and another is typically around 170 days.
So far it seems that the Covid variants appear to emerge in parallel to one another. Thus, there is actually no reason why the next wave will be less severe than the previous ones.
However, Gore noted that it is expected for the virus to become “more benign” and endemic as time goes on. And so when looking at these patterns Gore is able to predict that the 5th wave could arrive in South Africa at the end of April or early May.
“While it may be more severe, we still think this is unlikely; but it is a risk and, therefore, I think we need to be careful not to take a hard view. The overriding position as a planner or business leader is to expect the best but plan for the worst and make sure you can survive some severity of a wave.”
As of today the cumulative number of #COVID19 cases identified in SA is 3 686 556 with 1 436 new cases reported. Today 16 deaths have been reported bringing the total to 99 625 deaths. The cumulative number of recoveries now stand at 3 569 441 with a recovery rate of 96.8% pic.twitter.com/O1O1LYEIWk
— Department of Health (@HealthZA) March 8, 2022
Predictions for a new variant cannot be made
During a radio interview, epidemiologist Professor Salim Abdool Karim, also expressed his predictions for a fifth Covid wave at the end of April/beginning of May.
And although it is impossible to tell what the next Covid variant could be, the government still needs to be prepared to reimplement new restrictions based on the new variant.
“We work on a rough basis that we will get a new wave every three months. The Omicron wave ended about two weeks ago so that means we now have about three months, and we can predict that we will likely see the fifth wave around the end of April or thereabouts.
“It will be driven by a new variant and it is unlikely that Omicron will be coming back again. The issue is that nobody can predict what the new variant will look like.”