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South Africa is currently in the midst of a potent COVID-19 third wave, with the Delta variant partly responsible for the high rates of transmission.

We are not alone on that front, and across the world, officials and governments are reacting to the variant’s rapid spread.

In Australia, four of the major cities have gone into lockdown, and Ireland has pushed back plans to open bars and restaurants, for example.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Delta variant, first identified in India, has now spread to at least 85 countries.

Via CNN, here are some of the basics:

By mid-June, the Delta variant accounted for 99% of Covid-19 cases in the UK, according to Public Health England, and it is set to account for 90% of cases in Europe by the end of August…

“Delta is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said Friday.

The virus carries a cluster of mutations, including one known as L452R, that helps it infect human cells more easily…

The ECDC [European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control] estimates its about 40% to 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant…

The next important question, especially for those over 60 who have received at least one COVID-19 jab, relates to how effective vaccines are against the Delta variant.

Rather than break each one of those down, you can read this analysis on News24, which looks at the Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, among others.

The latest South African COVID-19 stats, released last night, paint a very worrying picture. We recorded 21 584 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, which is the fourth-highest single-day increase since the virus was first identified in the country last March.

The record for confirmed new infections in a single day is 21 832, recorded on January 6.

Gauteng accounted for 12 806 of those, and the Western Cape registered 2 447 new cases, with testing showing a positivity rate of 28,4%.

In Namibia, the situation is even worse, with people talking of a ‘perfect storm’.

Officials in the Western Cape now anticipate that the third wave could be worse than the second wave, due to the Delta variant.

Premier Alan Winde spoke with CapeTalk:

Last Thursday our digicon had said that about 8% of our cases were the Delta variant… and by Sunday evening I was getting messages that we are probably detecting around 50% of the cases in the Tygerberg region…

Projections at the moment indicate that we are averaging at about 135 hospitalisations a day. They are saying next week could go to 240 and even the week after to 512 a day. It’s a bit scary. Those are the projected numbers.

Do your bit, and be responsible.

Of course, the rampant rise of the third wave in our country isn’t due solely to reckless behaviour from our citizens.

Writing for Quartz, Shabir A. Madhi, Professor of Vaccinology and Director of the SAMRC, points out the rather obvious:

We’ve simply failed the people of South Africa by not ensuring that they were timeously vaccinated. The vaccine program that’s under way has struggled to meet even the revised targets set by the National Department of Health.

To date, under 5% of South Africans have been vaccinated, including less than one-third of those older than 60 years who were targeted to be vaccinated by the end of June 2021…

Had we vaccinated high risk individuals above the age of 60, as well as others with other co-morbidities before the onset of the current resurgence, the number of people being admitted to hospital, and the number of people dying, would have been reduced significantly. That’s been the biggest disappointment.

Funny, I didn’t hear President Ramaphosa mention that during the last evening address.

We don’t have the money to vaccinate on weekends, but we do have money to bail out government-owned enterprises time and time again, and our ministers never seem to go hungry.

[sources:cnn&capetalk&quartz]