South Africans urged to protect themselves against potential fifth wave by getting vaccinated

Health Department Deputy DG, Nicholas Crisp, has urged South Africans to continue getting vaccinated and not wait for the current increase in COVID-19 infections to become a wave.

Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect against severe illness and even death from COVID.

South Africa has reported a notable increase in COVID cases, raising concerns that the country could be seeing the start of the fifth wave.

The rise in cases appears to be linked to the new BA4 and BA5 Omicron sub-variants.

The NICD indicated that the country’s coronavirus test positivity rate climbed to the highest in more than three months this week. Dr Crisp says the increase isn’t a cause for alarm.

“We are seeing hospitalisations, we are seeing children being hospitalised, we’re seeing a lot of young people, the numbers are still small, of the people who are being admitted and it’s unvaccinated people. We’ve warned repeatedly that just thinking that you may have wild virus immunity because there’s wild virus immunity in the community is not sufficient. We don’t know how long those antibodies last, and we don’t know how protective they are.”

South Africa records over 4 000 cases of COVID-19, Health Department urges people to vaccinate: