BL Premium reports that a study published in the latest edition of the SA Journal of Science concludes that SA’s coronavirus restrictions had little effect on Covid-19 deaths after the initial hard lockdown because the measures were too blunt and timed too late to dampen provincial surges.
Up to 280,000 people died from Covid-19 during SA’s first four waves of coronavirus infections, about three times more than official statistics showed, the researchers estimated. “This places SA among the worse-suffering countries after allowing for the youthfulness of our population,” noted study co-author Rob Dorrington, a researcher at UCT’s Centre for Actuarial Research. The government imposed a series of lockdowns shortly after SA’s first Covid-19 case was identified in March 2020 in an attempt to slow transmission of the virus and protect the health system. Its periodic restrictions on schools, businesses, travel and alcohol sales had a devastating effect on the economy and led to an estimated 2-million job losses. These interventions, according to the study, were either too late or ineffective at limiting the cumulative number deaths from Covid-19. “The timing of tightening and relaxing lockdowns at a national level does not appear to have been ideal from a provincial point of view. However, it is not clear that trying to implement changes at a subnational level would be either practical or effective,” said Dorrington. He went on to indicate: “Also … it is hard to argue that lockdowns did much to prevent infections if more than 80% of the population has been infected, many more than once.” The most recent seroprevalence survey estimated almost everyone in SA had antibodies to Covid-19 by mid-March, from either vaccination or infection or both, and only 10% had antibodies from vaccination only.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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