Expect 45,000 SA deaths, adviser warns
Up to 45,000 South Africans are expected to die from Covid-19 over the next two to three years, one of the eminent doctors advising President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned
This is a shocking number, but it is much lower than an earlier estimate of between 120,000 and 150,000 fatalities.
Also, we should prepare ourselves for waves of the epidemic over that period and accept that intermittent lockdowns will become part of life.
“We are not returning to normal for the next two to three years,” Wits University’s Prof Shabir Madhi, who heads the public health subcommittee advising Ramaphosa and his cabinet, said.
In a webinar yesterday, Madhi said new information showed that between 50 and 80 times more people were infected than initially thought, but they were asymptomatic.
This, in turn, showed that the mortality rate would be lower than expected.
“The only information we had in the early days from China was that a vast majority would be symptomatic,” Madhi said.
“Based on that modelling, we felt at least 120,000 would die in SA because of Covid-19.”
Since then, studies in the US, China and Iceland had shown that at least 50% of infected people were asymptomatic and that “changes the numbers completely”.
Madhi said the estimate of between 120,000 and 150,000 deaths had been revised to 45,000, “a huge jump down”.
“This is not necessarily going to take place in a single wave but more likely in several waves.
“We can’t go into perpetual periods of lockdown [but] the reality is that this is going to cause many epidemics at least for the next two to three years.”
Mass gatherings would not come back, physical distancing would stay, and the “way we engage with people will require caution”.
“This is not a short-term crisis that is going to be sorted out in the next few months,” Madhi said.
“We might see a huge upsurge in cases and at least three to four epidemics over the next few years.”
The winter months of next month, June, July and August were likely to be the worst, but far fewer people would get severe forms of the disease and herd immunity could start to kick in.
“But the bad news is we don’t know who is spreading it,” he said.
Madhi said the new information had huge implications in terms of quantifying the number of infections and also had implications for lockdowns.
Lockdowns would need to be strategically phased out, he said, adding that those most at risk — the elderly and people with pre-existing respiratory issues, diabetes and other illnesses — would need to continue isolating themselves even as others returned to work.
Madhi said the lockdown had been a serious decision and had affected the economy.
But it had reduced the number of community transmissions, had bought SA time in terms of scaling up “our ability to take on a larger number of [hospital] admissions once there is a peak in number of cases”, and, most importantly, had made the rollout of a mass surveillance programme possible.