This week, South Africans have watched our number of confirmed coronavirus cases rise rapidly.

As of this morning (Friday, March 27), we have more than 1 000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with two deaths.

To track the spread of the coronavirus, and to be sure you’re getting the correct stats, make use of these four resources.

The rise in numbers has been alarmingly sharp, and will continue for at least 10-12 days before the flattening of the curve as a result of the lockdown kicks in, but even that is not the full picture.

South Africa is struggling with a massive backlog of COVID-19 test results – more than 5 000 as of yesterday – and the effects of this are dire.

The Mail & Guardian reporting below:

Between February 10 and Tuesday this week, more than 15 000 tests were conducted, with 3% of those tested confirmed as infected with Covid-19.

One of the doctors in the public sector with whom the M&G spoke said the backlogs were due to the sector as a whole being unprepared for the virus.

“Currently we are only confirming cases of those who show symptoms and the rest have to wait. This is the backlog. This is absurd as the virus incubates giving it time to spread. We can’t quarantine people who have not been confirmed yet because the tests are not available and that’s because they are not showing symptoms,” said the doctor.

When pressed on the matter, the department of health has sidestepped the issue, saying it will be addressed in press briefings.

Anybody who watched those live press briefings, where ministers field up to 10 questions at a time and then offer half-hearted answers to a few before moving on, knows that isn’t ticking the boxes.

Dr Atiya Mosam, a public health medicine specialist, has some worrying insight:

…the numbers given each day are results from days before, and not the number of infected people, or even the number of people who might have tests that will show that they are infected…

“If we are not testing enough, we are not picking up the cases.” This, she said, could mean that the government will end up working with a “skewed picture” of things as it uses the 21-day lockdown to see how Covid-19 has spread.

With the disease taking up to two weeks to burn out of people who don’t end up hospitalised, the government would expect the over 700 people [now up to 927 as of Thursday night] who have currently tested positive to either be in hospital or better before the end of the lockdown.

Mosam said this might make it look like numbers “have stabilised — but we will be sitting with a backlog [of tests]”.

As with most of the nations battling the pandemic, our public health sector will more than likely be completely overwhelmed if the spread continues at its current speed.

Our private sector is also under the pump:

A private laboratory doctor confirmed this, saying that the backlog was growing. “The backlog is mostly due to people who are panicking and want to be tested for no reason.”

This panic testing will put pressure on an already strained system.

Our National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) hopes to be able to process around 36 000 tests a day by the end of April. For now, as the world experiences a shortage of testing reagents (the chemicals used to complete the tests), that is just not possible.

NHLS spokesperson Mzi Gcukumana remains confident that they will eventually be able to meet the demand:

The country’s laboratory services have six laboratories performing Covid-19 related tests with 18 state of the art Cobas 6800 and 8800 machines for processing samples and 180 GeneXpert analysers which, Gcukumana said would be available in all provinces for testing by April.

“These are the machines that can process tests in 45 minutes, and the smaller machines can be placed in mobile vehicles, which makes it ideal for community testing,” he said.

Let this be another reminder of why adhering to the national lockdown rules and regulations is so important.

Arrests have already been made by South African law enforcement officers, clamping down on those who don’t play ball.

Also clamping down is social media, with arguments erupting as images of people breaking the law are shared.

The World Health Organisation has stressed that the only way to curb the pandemic is through mass testing (“we have a simple message for all countries: Test, test, test”), and we are just not there yet.

We need to do everything in our power to buy ourselves some time until we are.

#StayHomeSouthAfrica.

[source:mg]