The recent COVID-19 cases in South Africa are clear signs of the 5th wave according to Professor Tulio de Oliveira of the KZN Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform. He spoke with eNCA's Heidi Giokos. Courtesy of #DStv403
JOHANNESBURG - The only way to fight the COVID-19 pandemic is through population immunity according to Professor Tulio de Oliveira, of the KZN Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform.
He says vaccination against COVID-19 remains important.
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De Oliveira said, “it is extremely important because that’s the main reason why COVID is going to go away, it’s through population immunity."
"A lot of people have assumed, especially with the very big wave that happened in South Africa that immunity from just previous infections-the great majority of people in SA have been infected, either symptomatic or asymptomatic would protected from all the waves of infections, unfortunately that’s not true, and that was some very advanced scientific results that came last week from a colleague of ours that shows that previous infection after three months will have lower levels antibodies which allow one to be re-infected"
"So we really want people to protect themselves. What we found, even in people that have previously been infected, is that follow that with vaccination will create very high-level antibodies and that’s is the kind of ways that we really are going to get out of the pandemic.”
