ESWATINI TO KNOW 3RD WAVE FATE BY TOMORROW

MBABANE - The Ministry of Health will determine if the country is within the third wave by tomorrow.

Following the increase in COVID-19 infections in the country in the past two days, the Ministry of Health’s Senior Epidemiologist Nhlanhla Nhlabatsi said the ministry would determine if the country was within the third wave by tomorrow.  Explaining this, Nhlabatsi said it took five days to compile a conclusive report on daily statistics. After over a month of recording single digits of daily COVID-19 cases, the country recorded 14 COVID-19 infections on Friday. The next day (Saturday), eight cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. “After five days, which is on Tuesday (tomorrow), we will be able to tell if the country is now in the third wave regarding the increase in COVID-19 infections. As for now, we just saw clusters of cases within the same location meaning it might have been issues of social distancing,” said Nhlabatsi.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi said the increase in infections was a cause for concern. “Any increase in infection is a cause for concern. We test, isolate, treat, and contact trace continually,” said Nkosi. She also said the country was intensifying its preparations with regard to the third wave.  “We are watching these developments closely as SA shares information with us and the rest of the world through WHO (World Health Organisaton). We have been preparing for a possible third wave, but now with new information, we are doing this with a sense of urgency. We are preparing our hospitals for case management. The space was significantly increased in the second wave,” said Nkosi.

Testing

The minister also said they had enough testing capacity to scale up significantly when the need arose.  “Our stock levels are good, with a healthy pipeline. We have also increased testing spaces that are not being used as much at the moment, but we continue vigorous testing at health facilities,” said the minister. She further said the challenge they faced was that they did not have facilities for genomic sequencing in the country, but were working on it. “We are still sending samples to SA regularly. We need to know what other variants may be circulating in the country quick enough for us to take appropriate action,” she said.

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