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On February 15, Discovery CEO Adrian Gore reached out to medical scheme members to answer some pressing questions about COVID-19 vaccines, that had been flooding in since the first batch touched down on South African soil.

You may recall the farcical coverage of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrival, which was repeated again last night as the Johnson & Johnson vaccines landed.

Gore said that rolling out the vaccines was a “crucial, complex process with many unknowns”.

He went on to stress the importance of helping to make the national rollout a success, given the scale of the pandemic and its tragic impact.

“There have been over 2.3 million deaths globally, and approximately 120,000 excess natural deaths in South Africa during the period of the pandemic – most of which are almost certainly attributable to COVID-19.”

Gore expanded on these numbers in an interview with 702, saying that more than 50% of the population have already been infected with the virus.

BusinessTech transcribed some of that interview:

“There is no ambiguity. If you look at the graphs of excess deaths, where it peaks up and comes down, it is absolutely around the first and second waves (seen in South Africa).”

“It is incontrovertible that this is linked to COVID-19. If you extrapolate backwards from the mortality rate the number of people who have been infected, in our view, is probably over 50% of the country.

Researcher and epidemiologist Professor Alex Welte agrees with this estimate in a study titled Prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among blood donors in Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, and Free State provinces of South Africa in January 2021, published last week.

In an interview with CapeTalk, he says that half (roughly 30 million people) of the population has been infected, an estimate that arose out of antibody tests on samples taken from blood donors across four provinces between January 7 and January 25.

He also found that there was a striking difference in the prevalence of COVID-19 between races, which he attributes to economic disparity.

“One can only imagine this has to do with housing conditions, low-rise, high-density housing makes it difficult for people to observe [physical] distsancing.”

“We see that amongst whites, who mainly on average live in spaced-out urban homes, the prevalence of anti-bodies was fairly low, below 20% for the most part and uniformly above 50% amongst black donors.”

To return to Gore’s statement sent to Discovery members, he went on to address a rumour that was doing the rounds that the medical aid scheme would be funding vaccines for non-members through a cross-subsidisation agreement, which he says is “simply not true”.

Gore also addressed members who have asked why Discovery hasn’t procured its own batch of vaccines for distribution.

“First, there is a global shortage of vaccines, and the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the vaccines will currently sell only to national governments, and not to any other entities. Second, there are specific risk factors that make some people more susceptible than others to severe illness and death should they contract COVID-19.”

Not following this process would mean low-risk people get vaccinated before the clinically vulnerable, resulting in unnecessary illness and death.

In other words, we can’t let those socio-economic disparities get in the way of vaccine distribution, especially to those who need it most.

[sources:discovery&702&businesstech&capetalk]