EDITORIAL: Don’t let down your guard
EDITORIAL: Don’t let down your guard
At the peak of the deadly Covid-19 wave in the mid-winter of 2021, Namibia recorded, for a brief moment, the highest daily death rate globally.
According to Our World in Data, our daily rate of death last July stood at 22 per million. For a country with just over 2.5 million, this was an unimaginable horror.
Almost a year later, we have entered the fifth wave.
While many families still grieve the loss of loved ones, most Namibians have moved on. And two years after the pandemic first created a tsunami of global chaos and panic, it appears that Covid-19 has settled into the fabric of life.
Most of us have either had it and survived, or are likely to survive if we get infected now – especially those who are vaccinated.
After the calamitous lack of oxygen, hospital space and other logistical fault lines one year ago, our hard-working healthcare workers and organisations are hopefully better prepared for another spike in cases.
But it would be wrong to let down our guard.
Covid-19 can still harm, and it can still kill. As a country that has experienced a Covid-19 inferno amidst an under-vaccinated and unprepared population, we must do better this time.
Heed the science. Mask up. Wash your hands. Get the jab.
Remember: Even if you only experience a mild bout, your fellow Namibian could be the one who suffers the worst of it.
Let’s not add to a grief that still percolates in many households a year later.
At the peak of the deadly Covid-19 wave in the mid-winter of 2021, Namibia recorded, for a brief moment, the highest daily death rate globally.
According to Our World in Data, our daily rate of death last July stood at 22 per million. For a country with just over 2.5 million, this was an unimaginable horror.
Almost a year later, we have entered the fifth wave.
While many families still grieve the loss of loved ones, most Namibians have moved on. And two years after the pandemic first created a tsunami of global chaos and panic, it appears that Covid-19 has settled into the fabric of life.
Most of us have either had it and survived, or are likely to survive if we get infected now – especially those who are vaccinated.
After the calamitous lack of oxygen, hospital space and other logistical fault lines one year ago, our hard-working healthcare workers and organisations are hopefully better prepared for another spike in cases.
But it would be wrong to let down our guard.
Covid-19 can still harm, and it can still kill. As a country that has experienced a Covid-19 inferno amidst an under-vaccinated and unprepared population, we must do better this time.
Heed the science. Mask up. Wash your hands. Get the jab.
Remember: Even if you only experience a mild bout, your fellow Namibian could be the one who suffers the worst of it.
Let’s not add to a grief that still percolates in many households a year later.
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Namibian Sun
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