Western Cape Premier Alan Winde is confident the province will have a handle on the fifth wave of Covid-19 infections.
Winde said the fifth wave was expected in the province next month.
“The epidemiology team have said to expect it around May,” he told Weekend Argus yesterday.
He said they expected more cases, but less severe ones with few people needing to be hospitalised.
As of yesterday evening, the new number of detected Covid-19 cases in the Western Cape is 186 and nationally 1 206, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed.
The NICD said the Western Cape would be in the fifth wave when the number of new coronavirus cases reached 30% of the peak of the previous wave, based on a seven-day moving average. This would be approximately 1100 new cases, daily.
Winde has stressed that vaccines were the best weapon against the virus. “We strongly encourage those at the high risk, including those 50 years and older to get vaccinated.”
According to the Western Cape’s vaccine dashboard, nearly three million residents have received a jab.
In an attempt to make it easier for Capetonians to get the vaccine, the City of Cape Town teamed up with various City subcouncils to bring the service to the community.
The Brackengate Hospital of Hope is currently the only Covid-19 intermediate care facility with patients.
Brackengate is a field hospital that was commissioned to ensure that the province’s health-care system can respond during peaks of Covid-19.
Dr Angelique Coetzee, member of the Solidarity Doctors Forum advisory board, told Weekend Argus that the severity of the fifth wave depends on the new variant.
“For a new variant to emerge it must be either more transmissible and or more severe than any of the predecessors. For now, we think, it would be more transmissible than Omicron.
“The next letter in the Greek alphabet is Pi and this is why the next variant will be dubbed Pi.
“It (the new variant) needs to replace Omicron which is currently very fast spreading, so if you look at that it needs to more fast spreading than Omicron to replace it.”
Leading epidemiologist Professor Salim Abdool Karim previously told IOL that the next wave of infections were expected in May and would be driven by Pi.
“We now have to be ready for Pi,” Karim said. “We have to anticipate that we are likely to see Pi probably in early May and we now have to make sure we have the tools to deal with it when it comes along.”