The Western Cape Department of Health has confirmed that the province has officially entered the peak of the second wave of COVID-19 infections. This news was announced on Tuesday [January 5] by Department head Dr Keith Cloete during a weekly digital conference with Premier Alan Winde.
A peak is categorised as when the cases of the past seven days are less than those of the previous seven days.
Cloete added that hospitalisations and mortality data indicate early signs of these rates stabilising, and that they have worked on the assumption that the peak will be reached at around January 7.
According to Cloete, the assumption was made based on data observed on the Garden Route and Nelson Mandela Bay – two of the country’s most affected regions.
“We have entered the peak of the second wave with early signs of stabilisation, not that we have gone through the peak. Hospitalisation mortality continues to show an increase but there’s early signs of possibly moving to a plateau,” Cloete said to EWN.
“A peak is when your rate of increase starts slowing down. So your seven day average… when you take the cases you had in the last seven days and divide them by seven and compare that to all the new cases in the sevens days before then. The peak is when those two numbers start becoming the same.”
Picture: Dr Keith Cloete/Facebook