The pandemic has all but ended in South Africa. Sure, there are still signs warning everyone to maintain a social distancing. And people continue to wear masks in public. But talk to South Africans, and you get the sense that it is, as they say in the American South, all over but the shoutin’.
The way South Africa successfully handled the latest wave of the pandemic offers a preview of what could happen elsewhere. That’s because it’s a few weeks ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to the highly infectious omicron variant. A massive wave of infections hit South Africa in mid-December but crested by early January. The daily new-infection rate is now around 3,000, roughly the same as in mid-September.
The end of the pandemic is fascinating to watch up close here in South Africa. South Africans seem to be a few steps ahead of the government, slowly removing their masks and resuming normal social activity days or weeks before it’s officially allowed. It’s not happening a moment too soon for South Africa’s beleaguered tourism industry, which took an omicron-size hit in December when many countries banned travel to and from South Africa. But there is finally a sense that this pandemic is in its final stages.
No country needs that more than South Africa.
