Western Cape chief of operations Keith Cloete added that the COVID-19 deaths have not increased but they are monitoring any possible spike.
CAPE TOWN – The Western Cape Health Department said on Tuesday it will continue to monitor COVID-19 particles that are found in wastewater treatment plants in the province.
This is to identify whether there has been an increase or decrease in COVID-19 particles from week to week.
Speaking to CapeTalk on Tuesday, Western Cape health department chief of operations Keith Cloete said: “About three weeks ago, there was a peak, and about two weeks ago, it slowly started to come down. What we are seeing at the moment is that because people are not testing as much as they used to, we see fewer number of cases detected.
“The most important thing for us is to monitor whether there is an increase in the number of hospitalisations and the number has not significantly gone up.”
Dr Cloete added that COVID-19 deaths have not increased saying they were monitoring any possible spike: “So, although we have these new variants that are a part of Omicron, it is not causing severe enough infections for hospitalisations to increase. Until the hospitalisations increase, we will just be monitoring the situation and we expect ups and downs over the months as we stabilise exit from the virus.”
