Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is a key player in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in one of the countries worst affected by the second wave of the virus.

Barry Shub is a veteran and eminent South African virologist who founded his country's Institute for Communicable

Diseases and is currently chair of the government's advisory committee on COVID vaccines.

South Africa is experiencing an alarming surge in infections and deaths linked to the emergence

of a highly transmissible new strain of the coronavirus.

The government imposed a second lockdown before Christmas, but critics say it's too little,

too late, and they accuse officials of bungling the rollout of a vaccination program which could

begin to turn the tide of the pandemic.

Right now, South Africa is one of the most important front lines in the COVID crisis.

Does the Pretoria government have a strategy that will avert a public health disaster?

Well, Barry Shubb joins me now on the line from Johannesburg. Welcome to

Hard Talk. Good afternoon, Stephen. Thank you. It's good to have you on the show. How bleak is the

COVID picture in your country, South Africa, right now? It is bleak. We are well into our second wave,

which is really manifesting quite a bit more seriously than our first wave.

We really, we're averaging about, oh gosh, about 18 to 20,000 new cases per day

as against the highest peak that we had in our first wave of about 14,000.

So they give you some idea that we really are on a steep upward trajectory of our second wave.

So it is very worrying and we're just worrying it's going to move up to our province of Kalting,

where Johannesburg is situated and is probably going to expand there quite considerably.

So it does a worry.

Would it be fair to say in the sort of the language we use about this pandemic that right now

it is in South Africa out of control?

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