Student parties blamed as South Africa braces for Covid second wave

Health minister says end-of-year mass gatherings are turning into super-spreader events

 

Health workers prepare for Covid testing in Johannesburg. Photograph: Michele Spatari/AFP via Getty Images

South Africans have been warned to brace for a second wave of Covid-19 infections that has been blamed on a series of mass end-of-year parties held by students.

Zweli Mkhize, the health minister, said on Monday that numbers of new infections were rising fast and warned that if the trajectory continued health systems would be overwhelmed.

“A new issue and most worrying is … a large number of parties and young people drinking alcohol with no adherence to [social distancing and other measures] … This inevitably leads to super-spreader events … We have to contain these parties and mass gatherings,” Mkhize said.

One event in the south-eastern coastal town of Ballito earlier this month that was attended by more than 1,500 recent school leavers has been blamed for sparking a massive wave of infections.

Almost two-thirds of those present at the “Ballito Rage” festival – a series of parties, concerts and club nights – have tested positive, including hundreds who returned to homes many hundreds of miles from the venue.

Authorities are trying to trace all those who attended the festival, urging them to self-isolate.

Organisers said the event had received the go-ahead from local authorities, and that venues had been inspected by police.

Similar events involving students in Cape Town were blamed for accelerating a second wave of infections in and around the city, a favourite with tourists.

New infections in South Africa are highest in the 15-19 age group, statistics show.

“This age group is highly mobile and the majority of carriers are asymptomatic,” Mkhize said.

South Africa has recorded 861,000 cases of the virus, with 23,276 deaths, according to official statistics. Excess mortality studies suggest a death toll of more than 50,000 due to the outbreak. The president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is due to address the nation on Monday evening.

The disease claimed another high-profile victim over the weekend. The prime minister of Eswatini, which borders South Africa, died on Sunday aged 52 after being hospitalised with Covid. The small kingdom has recorded 127 confirmed deaths so far among 1.2m inhabitants.

“Their Majesties have commanded that I inform the nation of the sad and untimely passing away of His Excellency the Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini. His Excellency passed on this afternoon while under medical care in a hospital in South Africa,” the deputy prime minister, Themba Masuku, said in a statement.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, was widely praised for its initial response to the pandemic but criticism has since mounted since as the government has struggled to retain public trust amid allegations of widespread corruption, arbitrary decisions on restrictions and administrative incompetence.

The difficulty – if not outright impossibility – of social distancing in South Africa’s poorer, tightly packed urban areas was an enabler for the spread of the virus in the early months of the outbreak.

Harsh curfews inflicted massive suffering on the very large number of people who do not have regular incomes but rely on day-to-day earnings to pay for basic necessities.

The second wave of infections appears to have been accelerated by events aimed at more prosperous parts of South African society.

There have been more than 2.3m confirmed cases of Covid on the African continent – with more than 2m recoveries and 55,000 deaths cumulatively, according to the World Health Organization.

 

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Scientists are worried a second wave of Covid-19 infections is starting in Kenya and South Africa

 Protecting school children in Kenya.

Many African countries have been widely praised for their effective response to curbing the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Countries in the continent had from the onset of the pandemic implemented social distancing measures to control the spread of the virus and had from around August been reporting a decline in daily cases and deaths.

Against expectations, Africa has so far recorded a far lower tally of Covid-19 cases and deaths compared to Europe, Asia, the Americas, or the Middle East. The continent which accounts for about 18% of the global population, only accounts for about 3.2% of Covid-19 cases and 2.5% of deaths by the diseases globally.

But in recent weeks, there has been a resurgence in new cases and deaths in the continent.

As the US and European countries report a resurgence of cases in what is being referred to as the “second wave,” the resurgence of cases in some African countries is viewed as the potential beginning of a second wave across the continent.

There has been a resurgence in Egypt, DR Congo, and South Africa that may be the beginning of a second wave, but in Kenya, the picture looks different. Kenya appears to be fully experiencing a second wave. Over 1,500 new cases were reported in November surpassing those recorded (less than 1000 cases) during the worst time of the pandemic in the country before a decline in August.

Kenya has now topped 85,000 Covid-19 cases and nearly 1500 deaths including 31 health workers.  It has lost nine doctors, four who died in November. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union threatened a national strike from this weekend (Dec. 6) if the government did not provide protective equipment and medical insurance for its members, and compensation for health workers who die from Covid-19.

Kenya appears to be experiencing a second wave of Covid-19 cases *as of Dec. 3

 

Professor Kevin Marsh, a senior advisor and co-lead of the Covid-19 team at the African Academy of Sciences says calling these resurgences in Kenya and South Africa, a second wave depends on how one defines it.

“There is certainly a rise in cases and deaths in both countries following an initial drop. In Kenya, it is not clear if this is a genuine rise in transmission or whether it reflects cases from further afield coming into urban centers following the relaxation of restrictions on movement,” he says.

South Africa, which has reported the highest cases and deaths in Africa due to risk factors such as an older population and a high rate of HIV and tuberculosis infections, had been able to drastically reduced the number of daily cases and death. However, in the recent week alone, the number of new cases has increased from around 2000 to over 4000.

“It looks like there is a resurgence or an increase in the number of infections as compared to a few weeks ago,” says professor Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC). “This uptick could be the beginning of a new surge. The next peak will depend on interventions implemented to try and reduce community transmission.”

Gray says there is a discrepancy between the number of deaths that were expected by this time this year in South Africa and what is being observed. That is, there are more deaths in the country due to Covid-19 than is expected.

She says this could be due to under-reporting of COVID-19 in death certificates, people dying of Covid-19 without a diagnosis, and collateral deaths from diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis at home.

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