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Day 363 of living under some form of lockdown, and whilst there is some degree of normality to life as we know it, we are far from the home stretch.

That’s due in large part to the snail-like pace of our vaccine rollout plan, which, however you want to dress it up, has been a massive flop thus far.

It’s likely that only 500 000 healthcare workers will be vaccinated by the end of April, which is a third of the target originally set by our government.

How’s this for a stat? If you look at the health department’s official COVID-19 stats released on March 19, March 20, March 21, and March 22, you’ll see the number of South Africans vaccinated remained at 182 983.

Or, to put it another way:

We’ve flattened the wrong curve, SA! 🤦‍♂️#COVID19 #CovidVaccine #VaccineforSouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/8aADnvSIOQ

— Ridhwaan Suliman (@rid1tweets) March 22, 2021

We didn’t vaccinate a single person over the long weekend, which is especially staggering when you consider that researchers expect the third wave to hit the two big Eastern Cape metros of Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City by the end of March or the beginning of April.

That’s according to Prof Azwinndini Muronga, from Nelson Mandela University (NMU), and Prof Darelle van Greunen, also from NMU.

They penned an article on TimesLIVE:

This is sooner than expected and we are confident of the prediction as it is based on a range of local and regional data and on a year of national modelling, from the time Covid-19 hit SA in March 2020…

The runaway data at the moment signals more trouble is coming in the form of the third wave, but it won’t necessarily be the Eastern Cape driving it.

It might be driven by the Western Cape and spread countrywide.

It’s feared that travel in and around the Easter weekend period, as well as larger religious gatherings over this time, will speed up the third wave’s anticipated arrival.

The general public’s enthusiasm for precautionary measures aimed at slowing the spread appears to have dwindled drastically in the past few months (we all have COVID-19 fatigue, we get it), but national epidemiological experts reckon the Easter weekend could see a number of super-spreader events.

The National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) has been advised, by the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC), to put the country under an Alert Level 2 lockdown as a precaution for the Easter holidays, News24 understands

Below via BusinessTech:

“The concern is with Easter holidays that there might be an increase in movement which can increase spread of the virus and also Covid-19 fatigue with people becoming less compliant can be a concern,” said senior researcher at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr Ridhwaan Suliman.

“We do need to overcome any cluster outbreaks before they spread further, we do need to maintain our vigilant and also at the moment while cases are low it could be a useful time to monitor cluster outbreaks, identify hotspots and get on top of those.”

We also need to speed up the vaccine rollout.

Rwanda vaccinated 140 000 people over a two-day period earlier this month, but since we started our rollout on February 17, we have yet to hit 200 000.

Data journalists at the Media Hack Collective have put together a tool that allows you to track how long it will take for South Africa to reach the required vaccine target of 67% of the adult population.

You can dabble here, but be warned that it isn’t pretty.

Oh, and if you’re one of those “the third wave is not just around the corner, because my neighbour sent this link on a WhatsApp group and now it’s obvious that COVID-19 is just a hoax” people, we have just the protest for you.

[sources:timeslive&bustech]