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Well, it’s official.

Yesterday, Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced that South Africa has officially been hit by a ‘second wave’ of COVID-19 infections.

Mkhize said that because the surge in cases is no longer limited to select ‘hotspots’, the declaration has been made, with 6 709 new cases confirmed over the past 24 hours, in the latest numbers released last night.

That brings our total confirmed cases up to 828 598, with 22 574 confirmed deaths, and 51 366 confirmed active cases.

In September, daily infection numbers were as low as 1 000 a day.

Mkhize added that four provinces – the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Gauteng – are the key drivers of the second wave.

During his address, Mkhize went over some of the standout numbers:

You’ll notice that Mhkize pointed to the age group 15-19 years showing the highest number of cases over the past two days.

Pretty easy to nail down how that has come about.

If you skipped over the above video, here’s some of what Mkhize said via the health department’s official COVID-19 site:

The majority of the new cases are from Western Cape, and that is 30% of positive cases today, followed by Eastern Cape (24%), KZN (23%) and Gauteng (17%)…

“The other seriously concerning issue which I need to bring to the attention of the public, firstly is that when we were on the plateau, we had a positivity rate of 10%. As of today, the rate is at 18%. But some provinces are much higher than the 18%; the 18% is now the average for the entire country…There is a rapid increase in KZN and Gauteng, which is exponential,” he said…

“If this trajectory continues, our healthcare systems will be overwhelmed. Hence, part of the recommendations being tabled by provinces are now looking at how to contain these large gatherings and parties. The decision will be made by the NCCC.”

When you consider how lax the prevailing attitude among so many people seems to be, due to what can best be described as COVID-19 fatigue, it’s not hard to see how we have arrived back at this point.

I took a walk through the Cape Town CBD yesterday, and mask adherence, even inside a mall, was almost non-existent.

The endless COVID-19 news cycle has made us all jaded, but we really are back in the trenches, if we ever left them at all.

This from Business Day:

It is unclear whether the government will institute more stringent curbs on activity, having recently opened up after a hard lockdown from March that led to the loss of more than 2-million jobs in a country that was already battling record unemployment. SA is only now showing signs of a nascent recovery, with third-quarter GDP jumping by an annualised and seasonally adjusted 66%.

That 66% figure needs a little further unpacking before anybody gets too carried away.

Proposals will be made to the national coronavirus command council, after which decisions will be taken by the cabinet and communicated by President Cyril Ramaphosa…

Mkhize said requests have been made to all provinces to make suggestions on what needs to be done to manage the festive season.

At this point, one can’t help but feel that we may be headed the way of many European countries, with stricter lockdown measures a possibility.

If you’re holding out for the arrival of a vaccine to save the day, consider that the health department recently announced that South Africa will probably take its first delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine, which will cover 10% of the population, by the middle of next year.

Earlier this week, President Ramaphosa said, “the reality is that it will take some time before we can vaccinate enough South Africans to be assured of little to no transmission of the virus, and it will be a costly undertaking”.

[sources:sacoronavirus&busday]