“We won’t get back to normal quickly.” The words of Dale Fisher, chairperson of the World Health Organisation’s Outbreak Alert and Response Network, neatly encapsulates one of the few certainties for 2021. He was being quoted by Reuters in a story on whether the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines would provide herd immunity this year.
“We know we need to get to herd immunity and we need that in a majority of countries, so we are not going to see that in 2021,” Fisher said. “There might be some countries that might achieve it, but even then that will not create ‘normal’ especially in terms of border controls.”
In SA, we are seeing very little in terms of “normal”. Uncertainty prevails. Today, ST Daily reports on the crippling economic effects of strict border controls on transport companies. Though the government’s requirement for a Covid-negative certificate not older than 72 hours is being blamed for the chaos, the reasoning behind it is solid.
There are many balls in the air right now. Surviving the second wave. Stopping a third wave. Securing vaccines. Saving the economy.
Everything humanly possible needs to be done to try to curb the spread of the virus. But the financial losses to the road freight industry in the past month is said to be more than R2.5bn. Truck operators warn of job losses, companies shutting down and the consumer ultimately paying the price. It’s the curse of Covid-19. Added to that is an SA government that often fails to manage the fallout of some of its well-intentioned decisions.
The Reuters report cautions that governments across the globe should not over-rely on the prospect of vaccines to control the pandemic. Instead, testing, communication and educating the public on low-risk behaviour remain key.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday announced that SA had secured 20 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines. This as top SA health official Anban Pillay said the government was finalising the bilateral agreements with several vaccine manufacturers, the details of which could not be divulged due to non-disclosure agreements.
There are many balls in the air right now. Surviving the second wave. Stopping a third wave. Securing vaccines. Saving the economy. Ramaphosa’s “family meeting” on Monday night was part of ongoing attempts at juggling these balls as our hope for normalcy in the far future lingers. It needs to be seen in that perspective. The price we are paying for the regulations is high. But human life is priceless. About 1.9 million people have died of Covid-19 since December 2019, more than 33,000 of them South Africans.
Normalcy might not be on our radar any time soon but if SA leaders are to be believed, 2021 may see vaccines reaching our shores soon. Until then, we need to stand with the family.
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