COVID RULES

Professor Shabir Madhi also believes a few of the COVID-19 measures in place should be dropped. Photo: Stock Image / Pixabay

COVID-19 measures with little protection should be scrapped, says Madhi

Professor of Vaccinology Shabir Madhi stated that COVID-19 measures that serve no purpose should be dropped.

COVID RULES

Professor Shabir Madhi also believes a few of the COVID-19 measures in place should be dropped. Photo: Stock Image / Pixabay

Professor of Vaccinology Shabir Madhi believes that certain COVID-19 measures should be dropped. Reports revealed that safety measures that have not had an impact or serve no purpose should be scrapped.

Recommendations to the NCC about COVID-19 restrictions

The Department of Health, among others, put forward recommendations to the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC). This was regarding what future COVID-19 restrictions should be put in place.

The topic of a possible lifting of the National State of Disaster has become a common discussion. Prof Madhi believes that these restrictions are doing little to protect people from contracting COVID-19.

The potency of hybrid immunity is noteworthy

Prof Madhi does believe that people should still be vaccinated. He stated that even when people had developed their own protection due to past infection, vaccination is still important. 

Madhi stated that hybrid immunity is more potent than others. Hybrid immunity is a combination of a vaccine and infection. He explained that vaccine only or infection-induced immunity is not as strong as hybrid immunity.

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While natural and vaccine-induced immunity does protect against severe disease or even death, hybrid immunity can be considered more potent. This comes from data that Prof Madhi spoke about.

COVID-19 measures in place are not ALL necesarry

The University of Witwatersrand’s Dean of Health Sciences faculty explained that there are not many reasons to proceed with the restrictions for COVID-19 that are in place. Madhi revealed that masks should probably not be worn outdoors.

While there might be a few high-risk individuals who should wear masks, this can be done indoors, reports EWN.

“Certainly we shouldn’t be wearing face masks at all when outdoors. When indoors, there might be some individuals, especially people that are at high risk of developing disease even if they are vaccinated, that might want to continue wearing the right type of face mask, which is the N95 mask, especially when there’s an increase in the amount of virus that is transmitting.”

Professor Shabir Madhi

Thermal screening is not the be-all and end-all

Madhi also spoke about thermal screening and how it is “extremely misleading”. He added that while sanitising hands did not have a high protection level against COVID-19 its value in protecting against other diseases is important.

ALSO READ: Why the Health Dept says mask-wearing will remain… for now