Prof Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the new variant was responsible for the rapid resurgence of the virus.
“SA has a variant that seems to be spreading very fast.”
He said not only did SA have more than 14,000 infections in the last 24 hours, but it had a positivity rate of 26% which meant that with every fourth test done, one person was positive.
“What we are seeing in SA is a tip of the iceberg because we are not testing widely.
“The second wave came too early. What is worrying me the most is a lot of our hospitals have used almost every ICU bed they have. That is a problem not only for Covid patients but for normal people who might need the beds at this time of the year.”
Both experts encouraged the public to limit social interaction to curb the spread of the virus.
TimesLIVE