Faizel Patel – 02/06/2021

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

Wits University director of vaccines and infectious diseases Professor Shabir Madhi says President Cyril Ramaphosa should have been more stringent on restricting mass gatherings.

Professor Madhi was speaking to Radio Islam on Wednesday following Ramaphosa’s address to the nation and moving the country to an adjusted level 2 lockdown.

Not all were impressed with the new restrictions Ramaphosa has imposed on the country in an effort to prevent and curb the spread of the third wave of the coronavirus.

Despite curtailing the number of people attending gatherings and a tighter curfew, much more could have been done.

Professor Madhi says the president did not have much options to restrict the spread of the virus without impacting the economy.

“I think we need to realize that the main driver of the spread of the virus is mass gatherings. If we are wanting to minimize further affecting the livelyhood’s of people, we can’t go to higher levels of lockdown, we need to be much more strategic in the manner in which we try to actually slow the rate of the spread of the virus. So, I think restrictions on mass gatherings. In fact he probably should have been more stringent with the restrictions on mass gatherings.”

Professor Madhi says despite calls for the closure of schools, keeping the schools shut has not really assisted in terms of reducing infections in children.

“The other reason for people advocating for schools to be shut is the notion that children are spreaders of the virus which might or might not be true. But at the same time I think the reality is that from the child’s perspective, the child has everything to lose by being kept out of school. The child is not gaining anything because children remain at very, very low risk of developing severe disease after they’ve been infected. All the evidence in fact show that children are no more likely to spread the virus than adults are.”

Professor Madhi says the important feature of the spread of the virus is closeness of an individual being contact with another person.

“So the definition is where you got close contact is when you are in contact with a person within a two meter distance for at 10 to 15 minutes in an absence of wearing a face mask and everything else. If you arr wearing a face mask and if you’ve been in contact with another person in the same room, the chances of you being infected is very low and even less if the other person was also wearing a face mask.”

Professor Mahdi says people need a more nuanced approach in terms of understanding what the actual risks of the Coronavirus are.

Listen to the interview with Professor Shabir Mahdi