The World Health Organisation (WHO) says South Africa has enough experience, knowledge and capacity to handle a third wave of coronavirus (COVID-9) pandemic. The WHO has also commended South African scientists for their research on genomics that led to the country detecting the 501.V2 variant.
The WHO’s Dr Maria van Kerkhove says: “One of the things I am most impressed with within South Africa is the ability to get through that first peak, the first wave the second wave and the country knows what to do in terms of detection.
The sequencing capacity across South Africa has increased dramatically over the course of this pandemic. The scientists across the country who are sequencing using intelligence sequencing of samples around the country supporting other countries on the continent for sequencing.”
Kerkhove added that South Africa shouldn’t fear, but use the country’s expertise to control the upsurge of the third wave.
“You have the systems in place to be vigilant to be at the ready, to know what to look out for, to know what the warning signs are in case there is slight upsurge. We are all of us living in a global connected world variants are circulating, more variants will certainly be detected. But we know what to do, so we need to be ready to detect, be ready to quickly act, put in those measures in place so that any slight increase so any of this cases that are in clusters do not turn into community transmission,” she says.
Kerkhove elaborates on her assertions in the video below:
Her remarks comes after Gauteng Premier, David Makhura announced that the country’s economic hub is now in the midst of a third wave of COVID-19 infections.
Makhura says the number of new cases has more than doubled this week alone.
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