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Showing posts from 2020

Lockdown, back to Level 3

It's the end of 2020, and we are back to level 3 lockdown. A coronavirus variant was discovered recently in South Africa and is seemingly driving the second wave of infections in 4 provinces (Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KZN, and Gauteng).  Eastern Cape started to see an increase in early November, and it is in Nelson Mandela Bay metro that this new variant was picked up. Yesterday over 17 000 new infections were recorded, making this the biggest tally since recording. The second wave is well and truly bigger than the first. Technically, however, some medical scientists argue that a second wave becomes possible when the first one has been interrupted. Meaning cases should go back to zero, something that didn't really happen. Although cases did drop for almost three months since August, they didn't get to zero. So, technically we are still in the 1st wave; what we are seeing now is a resurgence. They argue! Vaccines have just been approved and are now administered in affected...

COVID-19 Lockdown

It's now over 100 days since South Africa declared a state of national disaster and thereafter imposed countrywide lockdown to fight COVID-19 disease.  The first cases of COVID-19 were identified in  Wuhan, China in December 2019.  When international news broke in early 2020, very few imagined that an unknown disease will change their lives in ways they never have dreamed of. News broke around March 2020 in South Africa that a group of holidaymakers returning from Italy started to show flu-like symptoms. It turned out they contracted Coronavirus in Italy or during transit. Now South Africa has the most cases in Africa and ranks in the top 10 globally. COVID-19 disrupted life as a whole. We are now in the third month working from home. We have become experts in the use of teleconferencing tools like Zoom and Teams.