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It seems inevitable, but deep breaths because there is no need to panic.

Experts predicted last month that we would be looking at a COVID-19 fourth wave come December and through into January of next year.

Just last week we took a look at South Africa’s latest daily COVID-19 stats and remarked on how low they were. Data released on the night of November 17 showed 566 new COVID-19 cases (with a testing positivity rate as low as 1,6%) and 11 COVID-19 related deaths over a 24-hour period.

Well, here come the ripples of that fourth wave. This from Moneyweb:

On November 20, the number of confirmed cases over a 24-hour period rose to 887, the highest since October 14, and on November 21, 3.4% of tests returned a positive result, according to government data.

If maintained over a seven-day period, that would be the highest proportion of people testing positive since the week ended September 26.

Stats released last night by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) showed that Gauteng is currently accounting for 80% of SA’s new cases.

The numbers were relatively low (312 new infections recorded across the country), but Monday’s numbers are always lower than other days of the week.

TimesLIVE below:

…the NICD warned that there was a “sustained increase” in new infections.

There were particular concerns over the number of people testing positive in Gauteng — Tshwane especially — “among 10 to 29 year olds over the past week”.

“Additionally, the NICD has recently identified a cluster among the 20-44 age group at an institute of higher education in Tshwane.”

Those sorts of localised clusters aren’t unexpected.

What is encouraging is that testing has not yet revealed any new variants of the virus. Both our second and third waves were driven by new variants.

Speaking yesterday, Health minister Joe Phaahla said the fourth wave isn’t expected to be as severe as the others due to our vaccination rates and natural immunity due to prior infections.

Here’s BusinessTech:

[He] said that the Department of Health wants to avoid imposing severe lockdowns as far as possible.

“We want to do as much as we can in terms of social restrictions to avoid super spreading, but without taking away too much from the liberties of people socially and economically. So we will advise accordingly,” he said.

“As we see the numbers currently, our advice from our epidemiologist is that this (increase in cases) is an isolated cluster that must be contained through contact tracing, quarantine and isolation, but at this stage, we must not panic.”

So, don’t panic, and do continue to adhere to basic COVID-19 safety protocols.

That way, we might just have ourselves a December on the beach where we can buy booze on weekends and stay out past 10PM.

Festive.

[sources:moneyweb&timeslive&bustech]