COVID-19 Update | April 2022

Published: Fri, 04/01/22

COVID-19 Update | 01 April 2022

Vaccine Rollout

Since the start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2021, a total number of 17.5 million (43.93%) of the South African population have now been fully vaccinated, with the test positivity rate of COVID-19 infections at 6.4%.

Researchers have confirmed that individuals may choose to mix their vaccines, however, one just has to be fully vaccinated with one before they ask for the other as a booster after either 60 or 90 days, depending on which vaccine they got first.

Find your nearest site here.

The number of vaccinated individuals changes daily to get accurate updates on the vaccine rollout, visit the external resources section on our COVID-19 Vaccine page or click here.

>Source: SA Coronavirus

New Government plan is on the cards, to lift South Africa’s national state of disaster:

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said that the government wants to lift the State of Disaster by 5 April following the gazetting of new regulations aimed at guiding the country’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As per President Cyril Ramposa's statement in his recent State of the Nation Address, the country is now entering a ‘new phase of the pandemic’.

Key elements of the proposed regulations include making the wearing of face masks mandatory in public spaces, such as shops, certain workplaces and in public transit as part of the general measures instituted to contain the spread of notifiable medical conditions that can spread through droplets or aerosol, this will exclude children under the age of six.

A full vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test taken 72 hours before departure would be required for people leaving the country and people who test positive for a notifiable medical condition before their departure out of the country may be subjected to mandatory quarantine.

If a person refuses to quarantine or go to a site of isolation as directed, a court order must be obtained to compel such a person to quarantine.

The new drafted amendments to the National Health Act is open to public comment.

Source: BusinessTech

New Government plan is on the cards, to lift South Africa’s national state of disaster

Studies show a hidden immune feature may have spared unvaccinated people from COVID-19 infections

As the world adapts to understanding COVID-19, more studies have been made giving us more insights into the infectious disease. Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Gothenburg have just taken another step toward understanding how the immune system develops resistance against COVID-19. For six months, the researchers at the University’s Sahlgrenska Academy investigated 156 employees from five primary healthcare facilities who were recruited between April and May 2020. None of these employees had been vaccinated against COVID-19, and the majority of them had to work with infected patients daily during the height of the pandemic.

Researchers identified IgA (immunoglobulin A) in the respiratory tracts of several of the individuals who didn't get COVID-19, which could mean they had an antidote in their immune systems all this time.

These antibodies are found naturally in mucous membrane secretions in the airways and gastrointestinal tract, where they protect the body by binding to viruses and other invading organisms.

According to the results of the study published in the European Journal of Immunology, a third of the care workers developed antibodies to COVID-19, and they fell into two distinct groups based on antibody patterns and COVID-19 incidence.
One group that exclusively possessed IgA antibodies never succumbed to COVID-19. Participants in the other group had IgG antibodies as well as T cells and did get infected with COVID-19.

However, it should be noted that the majority of the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against severe illness, hospitalisation, and death. In fact, as the Omicron subvariant BA.2 replaces its sister version, BA.1, as the dominant form of COVID-19 in many countries, researchers have discovered that two doses of COVID-19 vaccination still appear to reduce the risk of infection caused by the new subvariant.

Source: Interesting Engineering

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Kaelo

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