news365.co.za Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.194.207  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

GET https://news365.co.za/

<form method="get" id="search" action="https://news365.co.za/">
  <input id="search-input" inputmode="search" type="text" name="s" title="Search for" placeholder="Search for">
  <button id="search-submit" type="submit">
    <span class="tie-icon-search tie-search-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span>
    <span class="screen-reader-text">Search for</span>
  </button>
</form>

<form id="jp-carousel-comment-form">
  <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-comment-field" class="screen-reader-text">Write a Comment...</label>
  <textarea name="comment" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-textarea" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-comment-field" placeholder="Write a Comment..."></textarea>
  <div id="jp-carousel-comment-form-submit-and-info-wrapper">
    <div id="jp-carousel-comment-form-commenting-as">
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-email-field">Email (Required)</label>
        <input type="text" name="email" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-email-field">
      </fieldset>
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-author-field">Name (Required)</label>
        <input type="text" name="author" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-author-field">
      </fieldset>
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-url-field">Website</label>
        <input type="text" name="url" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-url-field">
      </fieldset>
    </div>
    <input type="submit" name="submit" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-button" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-button-submit" value="Post Comment">
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

___

 * Home
 * SA News
 * Entertainment
 * Covid-19
 * Accidents
 * Sport
 * Food
 * World
 * Jobs
 * More
   * Lifestyle
   * Scandals
   * Fashion
   * Motoring
   * Health & Beauty
   * Business and Technology
   * Travel and Tourism
   * Fitness and Training
   * Zimbabwe News
   * Privacy Policy

 * Search for

Home/Covid-19 Updates/To avoid 48 000 deaths in next 4 months SA must increase
Covid-19 testing
Covid-19 Updates


TO AVOID 48 000 DEATHS IN NEXT 4 MONTHS SA MUST INCREASE COVID-19 TESTING

Molly K
10 8 minutes read
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tumblr Pinterest Messenger Messenger WhatsApp

South Africa is only expected to reach the peak of the Covid-19 coronavirus in
August or September, but the Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) has warned that as
many as 48 000 people could die if the country fails to flatten the curve.



Public health specialists have also suggested that now may be the time to move
from surveillance of the disease and active case-finding to focusing on hotspot
areas, which would mean intervening in the clusters where the disease has been
shown to be problematic.

They argue that this change in strategy is necessary as the community screening
intervention process – which saw 28 000 community healthcare workers go
door-to-door in vulnerable communities to screen and test symptomatic people –
has not quite yielded the detection of cases that was anticipated.

Sponsored Content
 * 
   Pyjamas, Nachtwäsche und Nachthemden für Damen - NAP Naploungewear® Official
 * 
   Celeb Couples with Major Age Differences FamilyMinded
 * 
   23 People Who Ended Up Marrying Their Celebrity Crush POPSUGAR
 * 
   Very Richest People in the World, Ranked Work + Money

Recommended by


On Sunday, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the number of confirmed Covid-19
cases had risen to 10 015.

Eight more people were also confirmed to have died of the virus, bringing the
number of deaths to 194.



To date a total of 341 336 people have been tested for the virus across the
country.

The Western Cape has recorded the highest number of cases, with 5 168 people
testing positive for Covid-19.



Gauteng lags behind the province with 1 952 cases of Covid-19.

The government has identified other hotspots, including metros in Johannesburg,
Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Gingindlovu and Buffalo City.

After a meeting with Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, as well as seven
professors, epidemiologists and doctors working on the province’s response to
the outbreak, Mkhize said it was clear that the province was a hotspot – and, as
such, it required a containment strategy. He expressed concern at the
countrywide shortage of diagnostic test kits.

 

Earlier in the week in Rustenburg, North West, Mkhize had said he was “pleased”
with the countrywide screening of citizens, adding: “As of May 5, 8 216 605
citizens have been screened across the country.” Mkhize has attributed the
success in pushing back the Covid-19 peak infection rate to the lockdown.

 

 

However, he has cautioned that the storm could still arrive earlier.

“In the worst-case scenario, we can expect that to be earlier in July. But if we
were to prolong the lockdown longer than that, it would not proportionally
increase the extension of the peak by many more months. So, the difference is
not going to be too much … Our timing was perfect. We had a bit of an advantage
and time to plan,” Mkhize said.

“The focus did indicate that there was a need for us to do the lockdown to slow
the rate at which the infection is spreading, therefore pushing the peak to a
few months later, and this has been achieved. Of course, it means the infection
is still going to rise, but it won’t increase to the same level that it would
have if we did not do anything.”

However, added the minister, “we cannot continue with the country locked down
forever … we need to now get people to begin to understand the change in
behaviour that allows us to get back to normal economic activities”.

“For that to happen, we need to start easing the lockdown bit by bit, depending
on where the high-risk areas are,” he said.

“In this case, we are actually looking at how to reclassify each and every
district so that we know what more we can do in which area.”

Mkhize appeared to agree with the strategy of a focused approach, as suggested
by the experts, saying things would be done differently, depending on each case
and situation in various parts of the country.

“In some areas where we think the risk is too high, we need to contain it a bit
before we can actually open up normal activities. So, a different approach will
be seen because we are dealing with a practical and dynamic situation … The
districts are not the same,” Mkhize said.

Citing the Free State as an example, he explained how the situation in that
province was being dealt with: “If you asked me a few weeks ago, I was very
worried about the Free State … I thought it was going to be an epicentre, like
Wuhan in China. We went there and dealt with it, and we actually got it
contained in a way that stalled the infection, in a manner that is now different
from what we have seen in the Western and Eastern Cape. We don’t have a
one-size-fits-all situation.”

Mkhize expressed the same sentiments yesterday at the meeting with Winde and the
medical professionals.

He said it had been agreed that the approach going forward would require a
differentiation and delineation of various areas into blocks, and that stricter
restrictions might need to be applied to areas in the Western Cape with higher
numbers of cases.

“Cluster outbreaks in the Western Cape are happening in commercial settings such
as factories, supermarkets and such, which have had to close down. This means
that there are higher rates of infection … this means that we need stricter
restrictions in these areas,” he said.

Commenting on the need to quarantine people who had tested positive for the
virus to prevent them from infecting others, Mkhize said this was an area of
concern.

He said that a resolution taken at the meeting was that every patient testing
positive in the province would be hospitalised, even if they were not sick [in
other words, were asymptomatic].

He added that the province would increase its field hospital capacity to keep
Covid-19-positive people from contacting others while they were still
infectious.

According to Dr Kerrin Begg, a specialist in public health medicine, community
screening has not been as effective in detecting cases as was hoped.

She attributed this to provinces – save for the Western Cape – having focused on
testing symptomatic people as opposed to asymptomatic people.

She pointed to new global evidence showing that, in 50% to 80% of cases, people
will not show any symptoms at all, meaning they will not be ill.“What we were
hoping, in the active detection of cases from community screening, was that our
case detection would go up. But it has been quite low – only 1%. We are not
being very effective in detecting cases that way,” Begg told City Press this
week.

“When we look at the Western Cape, case detection is much higher than in the
rest of the country, particularly in the past two weeks. Overall, over the past
two weeks, it has been over 10%, which is five times what the other provinces
are picking up.”

Mkhize has expressed concern about interprovincial movement between the Western
and Eastern Cape after lockdown restrictions were lowered to level 4 to allow
people to travel back to their provinces of work or residence.

Just this week, 56 people travelling from the Western Cape to the Eastern Cape
tested positive for Covid-19 after being tested at the borders. The figure has
since increased to 80.

On Friday night, Mkhize said: “With interprovincial movement between these
provinces being an issue, it will be crucial for us to understand the dynamics
driving the epidemic in this region and assist where necessary.”

However, Begg said that the surge in cases was always going to come; it was just
a matter of when – and it appeared that the Western Cape’s surge had come before
the rest of the country.

“What’s happening is that the Western Cape is detecting at a higher rate, either
because the province does indeed have more cases in reality, or because the
other provinces are not being effective in detecting cases,” Begg explained.

“Furthermore, global evidence is showing that 50% to 80% of people who contract
Covid-19 will not have any symptoms and, in light of that, the Western Cape has
been more intentional with screening in workplace-based clusters, and has tested
even asymptomatic people – which is why we have seen more people test positive.

“We did a review this week and saw that at least a quarter of cases in the
workplace clusters [from essential service areas such as hospitals, supermarkets
and police stations] are asymptomatic cases.”

Using a baseline scenario that assumes that one infected person is likely to
infect three others, and that 75% of infected people present as asymptomatic, a
team consisting of some of the country’s leading healthcare actuaries developed
a model to assist their profession’s stakeholders in understanding the impact of
Covid-19.

Lusani Mulaudzi, a healthcare actuary and the president of Assa, said that the
model was based on the key mechanisms of a pandemic, namely susceptibility,
exposure, infection and recovery.

“Conservative modelling indicates that the peak is only likely to be reached
between August and September, depending on the effectiveness of lockdown and
other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Deaths may exceed 48 000 within
the next four months if government does not remain strict about to flattening
the curve.”

According to Mulaudzi, the most optimistic scenario assumes that the lockdown
initiative reduces the reproduction number (a method of rating the ability of
the virus to spread) to 1.5 and that NPIs after the strict lockdown period
result in a reproduction number of 2.1.

In this scenario, hospital bed usage would peak at 70 000 between August and
September, and requirements for intensive care unit beds would be just over 10
000. Expected cumulative deaths stop short at just over 48 300.

“We have to caution that the projected mortality figures are sensitive to the
mortality assumptions made. Views on the Covid-19 impact on mortality rates
still vary widely and, as more data becomes available, we may find that the
actual mortality figures are significantly different to what has been
projected,” he said.

A projection prior to the lockdown was reported on by News24 in March. Prepared
by the SA Centre for the Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in conjunction
with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, the model showed that
between 87 900 and 351 000 people would die from Covid-19 if no interventions
were made.

These projections were reportedly behind what catapulted the state into action
to impose stringent regulations.

Shabir Madhi, a professor of vaccinology at Wits University, said the country
was still at an early stage of the pandemic, even though the case numbers seemed
“frightening”.

It is only in the next few months that we are going to see many, many new cases
peaking, probably at up to 6 000 new cases per day come July and August.”

Madhi said that between 15 000 and 20 000 people should be tested daily.

“We are not testing at scale in South Africa. Another big problem is that it’s
taking five to 10 days for the results to get back from the National Health
Laboratory Service. It is a waste of resources to be testing when it takes five
to 10 days, because, even if the person was positive five to seven days ago,
they probably are no longer infectious. And it is too late to try to find all
those who that person had contact with in those 10 days.”

Begg said it was time the country moved to stage five of the national response,
in accordance with the presentation given last month by epidemiologist Professor
Salim Abdool Karim, chairperson of the ministerial advisory committee on
Covid-19. This would mean homing in on the hotspots.

She said: “We have learnt lessons from the Ebola outbreak – for instance, that
you can isolate mini areas like in an informal settlement, where you can isolate
an area and let people move around, but only in that block. This, rather than
have the whole country in lockdown when a farmer in De Aar has so little risk of
being infected. That’s what hotspot management is, which is what the professor
explained.

“Then we make sure we are ready for the [infected] people, which is what we’ve
been doing by creating field hospitals and managing healthcare worker exposure.
Those are things we should be putting our limited time and money into.

Source – City Press

More Stories For You

15 European Cities with Highest Quality of Life Sponsored: Far & Wide
The Most Competitively Priced Commuter E-bike Sponsored: Urtopia Smart E-bike
Sign Up

Langes Damenkleid, Maxi Lounge Kleid - NAP
Shop Now
Sponsored: Naploungewear® Official
We Finally Know Which European Country is the Worst Sponsored: Far & Wide
60 der schönsten weiblichen Milliardäre Sponsored: BleacherBreaker

[Pics] Mann zieht aus seinem Haus aus, nachdem er einen geheimen Raum gefunden
hat, der dieses enthält ... Sponsored: Housecoast
We Will Guess Your Education Level in 20 Questions Sponsored: TooCool2BeTrue

Are You In The Top 10%? 9/10 Failed This Quiz - Can You Ace It? Sponsored:
TooCool2BeTrue
[Bilder] 30 Warnsignale für Herzerkrankungen, die Sie nicht ignorieren sollten
Sponsored: DailySportX
Erschwingliche, trendige Winterkleider-Outfits - NAP
Shop Now
Sponsored: Naploungewear® Official

6 Dresses That Wowed at the 2021 Emmys Sponsored: POPSUGAR
We Finally Know Which European Country is the Worst Sponsored: Far & Wide

[Bilder] Peinlicher geht es kaum – Diese Urlaubs-Schnappschüsse bringen dich
zum Lachen Sponsored: Flights10
Did you know? Grace Kelly had a relationship with a French actor Sponsored: See
and so
[Bilder] Laut Mechanikern: Das sind die schlechtesten Autos Sponsored: MoneyPail

These Maps Will Blow Your Mind Sponsored: Far & Wide
Your IQ Is Over 140 If You Get Even 5/20 On This Quiz Sponsored: Parentsdome
Galleries

Your IQ Is 142 If You Get 15/20 On This General Knowledge Quiz Sponsored:
TooCool2BeTrue
[Bilder] Bestätigt: Dies ist die tödlichste Schlange der Welt Sponsored:
Crowdyfan
50 Terrible Maps That Made Us Laugh Sponsored: Far & Wide

Tags
Corona Virus latest Covid 19 latest Covid 19 peak in South Africa Covid 19
testing in south africa
Molly K
9 8 minutes read
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tumblr Pinterest Messenger Messenger WhatsApp

Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tumblr Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Telegram



MOLLY K





DELIVERY DRIVER NEEDED - APPLY NOW


SASSA OFFICES REOPEN


RELATED ARTICLES


COOK ISLANDS REPORTS FIRST CASE OF COVID-19

1 day ago


NO OMICRON DEATHS YET, AS VARIANT SPREADS WORLDWIDE – SAYS WHO

1 day ago


WHO WARNS AGAINST BLANKET TRAVEL BANS OVER OMICRON CORONAVIRUS VARIANT

4 days ago


COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACTING CONTROL OF HIV

5 days ago


PFIZER CEO SAYS THEY’RE ALREADY WORKING ON COVID VACCINE TARGETING OMICRON

5 days ago


NEW COVID-19 VARIANT OMICRON SYMPTOMS

6 days ago


Top Posts
 * Faith Nketsi flaunts her hot body in a bikini – Photos
   30/09/2021
 * Latest on Man who dragged a girl out of the car – This is what really
   happened
   2 weeks ago
 * Makhadzi fired for touching man’s pen!s while performing – Video
   27/11/2020
 * Harriet Khoza (Connie Ferguson) finds love again (Photos)
   15/10/2021
 * Tables Turn: V Class Guy Who Kicked Slay Queen Out Of His Car Just Gets
   Embarrassed
   6 days ago
 * Shocking: VIDEO of a frog coming out of a woman’s pun@ni leaves South
   Africans speechless
   29/10/2021
 * Pearl Thusi warns Blood and Water actress Ama Qamata over viral revealing
   photos she posted on social media (PICS)
   15/10/2021


Latest Posts
 * Upington SAPS seize drugs worth more than R2 million from bakkie
   10 seconds ago
 * Cyril Ramaphosa made Ivory Coast traditional chief
   51 mins ago
 * Blade Nzimande calls on police to investigate student drownings in North West
   1 hour ago
 * Inside Karabo Ntshweng’s traditional wedding – Photos
   2 hours ago
 * 2 years of tlof tlof you call it rape? – Jub Jub’s mom fumes; calls for a
   face to face with Amanda Du-Pont
   2 hours ago
 * Moshe Ndiki reveals he has been bewitched
   2 hours ago
 * Vaccination team robbed at gunpoint in Soshanguve
   3 hours ago
 * Eskom battles vandalism & severe weather as stage 2 load shedding continues
   3 hours ago
 * Human rights activist Dewa Mavhinga has died
   3 hours ago
 * COVID-19 plans required for events in KZN – Premier Sihle Zikalala
   3 hours ago



Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tumblr WhatsApp

Back to top button


 

Loading Comments...

 

Write a Comment...
Email (Required) Name (Required) Website


Privacy
3 ✕ Here are some notifications you missed: Here are some notifications you
missed: Recent Notifications Recent Notifications Upington SAPS seize drugs
worth more than R2 million from bakkie 1 minute ago Lady Du's thoughts on cyber
bullying 7 hours ago Pope Francis to visit asylum seekers on Greece's Lesbos
island 7 hours ago Error. Try later. You have blocked Push Notifications. Follow
these instructions to enable Push Notifications. Subscribe to receive push
notifications on latest updates You are unsubscribed to Push Notifications You
are subscribed to Push Notifications SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE ⚡ by
 Webpushr
Would you like to receive notifications on latest updates? YES NOT YET
X Upington SAPS seize drugs worth more than R2 million from bakkie 1 minute ago