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There was a time when South Africans kept a very close watch on the daily new infections and new deaths tally.

Now we are nearing 200 days under lockdown (day 197, to be precise), and COVID-19 fatigue means that the nightly announcements often get little more than a cursory glance.

If you haven’t checked in for a while, we have 17 408 confirmed deaths and 686 891 confirmed cases, although just 50 712 of those are active cases.

A few eyebrows have been raised regarding a recent spike in South Africa’s COVID-19 deaths, with 432 new deaths recorded between Monday and Thursday.

This was addressed last night by health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize, who said this was due to “better verification processes”.

TimesLIVE reports:

“There has been a noticeable increase in the number of deaths recently,” said Mkhize. “This caused us concern as we have received reports from the Medical Research Council (MRC) that there have been no excess deaths for three weeks in a row.”

He said the ministry consulted with the provinces to find out why there was such a spike in fatalities.

“We have received reports that the provinces are implementing the recommendations of the MRC to reconcile the data with home affairs deaths data. In addition, provinces are auditing the deaths data either by mining data from the DATCOV [a sentinel hospital surveillance system] surveillance reports and identifying unreported deaths or auditing the facilities on the ground,” Mkhize said.

He said this “robust refinement of data collation” must be welcomed.

“It reassures us that, moving forward, we exercise precision in our epidemiological surveillance,” the minister said.

Concise data collation can only be a good thing, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a further 432 people lost their lives in the space of four days.

If you want a breakdown of where South Africa is at in terms of handling the pandemic, and what may lie ahead, this Daily Maverick article is an excellent, data-driven read.

Whilst it’s hoped that an effective vaccine may be available in the near(ish) future, that’s really only half the problem. A recent Ipsos survey found that fewer than two-thirds (64%) of South Africans would accept a COVID-19 vaccine when and if it becomes available.

Here’s IOL:

 Of that 64%, only 29% “strongly agreed” to a vaccine while the rest “somewhat agreed”.

This is lower than the average of 74% of about 20 000 adults surveyed in 27 countries who said they would agree to get a vaccine.

The survey conducted on behalf of the World Economic Forum found that the number one reason for rejecting a Covid-19 vaccine was out of fear of adverse events (side effects), followed by concerns about the effectiveness of a vaccine against Covid-19.

South Africa falls in the group with the least intention to get vaccinated (below 70%), which includes Russia (54%), Poland (56%), Hungary (56%), France (59%), South Africa (64%), and Italy, Germany, the US and Sweden (all at 67%).

I wonder how many of those who would refuse a vaccine are worried about Bill Gates implanting tracking microchips into their bodies via the vaccine.

Yes, that is a real fear that some folks seem to have.

2020, man.

[sources:timeslive&iol]