JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Christmas celebrations, usually cheerful and lively in South Africa, have been dampened by the rise in cases and deaths caused by the country variant of COVID-19.
A record 14,305 news cases have been confirmed in the last 24 hours and with no sign of South Africa reaching its peak, threatening the country’s health systems, experts said.
South Africa has a cumulative total of 968,563 confirmed cases, including 25,983 deaths, by far the majority of cases across Africa. The 54 African countries, which represent 1.3 billion people, have reported more than 2.59 million cases together, including more than 61,000 deaths, according to data released Friday by the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rotating daily average of 7 days of new cases in South Africa has doubled in the last two weeks, from 8.65 new cases per 100,000 people on December 10 to 18.25 new cases per 100,000 people. on December 24th.
The South African variant, 501.V2, is more infectious than the original COVID-19 virus and is dominant in the country.
To combat the resurgence of the disease, South Africa has imposed measures that include the closure of many large public beaches, the need for masks in public areas, limiting alcohol sales to four days a week and the application of a night curfew from eleven in the evening until four in the morning. The pace of disease spread makes experts call for stricter measures.
“We need to think about additional restrictions, so that it is clear to people the seriousness of the current situation,” the infectious disease expert, Dr. Richard Lessells. “Because there are already a lot of hospitals in a lot of very stretched parts of the country.”
The Minister of Health, Zweli Mkhize, a a Christmas message to the country on Friday urged all South Africans to take preventive measures to curb the spread of the virus. Mkhize also issued a message on Christmas Eve in which he refused a suggestion from the British Minister of Health that the South African variant had contributed to the British variant.
Mkhize said statements by British Health Secretary Matt Hancock had created the perception that the variant in South Africa has been a major factor in the second wave in the UK.
“It simply came to our notice then. There is evidence that the UK variant developed earlier than the South African variant, ”said Mkhize.
There is no evidence to suggest that the South African variant is more transmissible, causes more serious disease or increases mortality than the British variant or any other variant that has been sequenced in the world, Mkhize said.
He also said he was against travel bans.
“It is the widely shared view of the scientific community that, given the current circumstantial evidence, the risks of travel bans may outweigh the benefits and that it is possible to contain variants while international travel is maintained,” he said.
“Banning travel between the UK and South Africa is an unfortunate decision,” Mkhize said in his statement. “There is no evidence that the South African variant is more pathogenic than the UK variant for needing this step.”
Mkhize noted that South Africa is part of a group of “countries leading the field of genomic surveillance: Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom.”
The leading genomic research in South Africa is Professor Tulio de Oliveira, who leads a team of scientists studying the genomic sequencing of the new variant.
“I’ll spend Christmas in my lab,” Oliveira told AP. “We will be working throughout the holiday season on this research.”
Other African countries are also battling a resurgence of the disease.
Nigeria has also reported a new variant of the virus and is fighting a resurgence of the disease. The country had reported more than 81,200 cases accumulated on Friday. The continued average of 7 days of new cases in Nigeria has increased in the last two weeks, from 0.21 new cases per 100,000 people on December 10 to 0.40 new cases per 100,000 people on December 24.