Africa’s largest fitness insurer said the number of heart-related deaths had increased the Covid-19 pandemic sixfold among consumers of one of its units.
Discovery Employee Benefits, a unit of Johannesburg-based Discovery Ltd. that has more than half a million customers, said another 112 people died of cardiovascular headaches in the year to June. That compares with 17 per year in the two years before South Africa recorded its first coronavirus case, according to figures provided to Bloomberg.
“Analysis of our annual claims knowledge shows a visual and related increase in the occurrence of cardiovascular disease-related deaths among our visitor base,” Guy Chennells, product manager for Discovery Employee Benefits, said in a separate statement. There has also been “an accumulation in the occurrence of cancer deaths,” he said.
Discovery attributed the spike in deaths to a confluence of pandemic problems. This includes prolonged Covid, a variety of physical illnesses that can continue with infection from respiratory illnesses, a 50% relief in medical exams this time, and other people exercising less.
South Africa suffered severe waves of coronavirus infections in 2020 and 2021 and imposed a series of restrictive lockdowns, restricting the movement of people. However, one in 500 South Africans died from the disease due to excess death data, which measures the number compared to an old average. .
Cancer deaths have risen from two a month before the pandemic to about six, he said. That, Chenells said, was because other people hadn’t been screened or screened for the pandemic.
Heart deaths among the division’s consumers rose to 31 in the year to June 2021, before nearly quadrupling the following year.
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