Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, explains how the COVID-19 mortality rate in the middle of a pandemic is difficult to calculate.
South Africa on Saturday surpassed 500,000 cases of COVID-19, accounting for more than 50% of all coronavirus infections reported in African countries.
Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize announced 10,107 new instances on Saturday night, bringing the country’s cumulative total to 503,290, 8,153 deaths.
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South Africa, with a population of approximately 58 million, has the fifth largest number of cases in the world, the United States, Brazil, Russia and India, all countries with particularly high populations, according to a Johns Hopkins University account. Experts say the record of a real global pandemic is much higher than the cases shown, due to the limited number of evidence and other reasons.
“Half a million is a step, because it shows that we have entered an immediate growth phase. We may succeed in 1 million cases very quickly,” said Denis Chopera, a virologist founded in Durban. “What we know for sure is that the numbers are underestimated and that this virus will be with us for a long time.”
Gauteng Province in South Africa, which includes Johannesburg, the country’s largest city, and Pretoria, the capital, is the country’s epicentre with more than 35% of the cases shown. Local hospitals are suffering to cope, and fitness experts say the country can succeed at the peak of its epidemic last August or early September.
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Cape Town, a city popular with foreign tourists in the far south of the country, was the first epicenter and peaked last month, according to fitness experts.
South Africa will revel in several peaks across the country, each of which will test its provincial physical care systems, said Chopera, executive director of the Sub-Saharan Africa Network for Excellence in TB and HIV Research.
“The Western Cape experienced the first summit and did well. Gauteng is now the epicenter and it turns out he’s doing well so far,” he said. “Other provinces, such as Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, have no reputation for having well-organized fitness systems. They can have serious problems.”
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South Africa imposed a strict blockade in April and May that it controlled to stop the spread of the virus, but caused economic damage in such a way that the country began a slow reopening in June.
South Africa was already in recession before coronavirus and its unemployment is 30%. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has provided grants to the country’s poorest and highest hospital materials, and recently accepted a $4.3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Corruption in the country’s pandemic reaction is a developing problem. On Thursday, the most sensible fitness officer in Gauteng Province was forced to resign on corruption allegations similar to government contracts for non-public coVID-19 protective equipment.
Ramaphosa warned that today, more than ever, South Africa’s persistent challenge with a widespread transplant is the lives of people at risk.