Vaccines alone will not end Covid woes
One year after SA discovered its first case of Covid-19 it has botched its public health response to the pandemic because its leaders followed the failed Western model that focuses on masks and lockdowns. They inexplicably failed to look east and to the lessons of African countries that ended Ebola in 2016 — without vaccines.
SA did not implement other pandemic control measures, including public education using community health workers, contact tracing and mass (or universal) testing. As a result,with a population of 59.6million, SA has had 1.5-million infections, the 16th highest in the world. Its 50,678 deaths are the 14th highest in the world.
According to the SA Medical Research Council, there were 145,022 excess deaths by February 27 2021.
By comparison China, with a population of 1.4-billion, has had 89,994 cases and 4,636 deaths. Japan, whose constitution does not allow a lockdown, has 126.3-million people, and had 438,956 cases and 8,227 deaths. South Korea, with 51.7-million people, has avoided lockdown and had only 92,817 cases and 1,642 deaths. Vietnam, with 96.5-million people, has had 2,512 cases and 35 deaths.
Taiwan, with a population of 23.6-million, has had 969 cases and 10 deaths. There has been a slow rollout of vaccines in Asia. But The Economist says: “With cases low and normal life resuming, the risks of delay strike many in Singapore and
South Korea as negligible.”
On March 30 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the government would employ 10,000 field workers to roll out an extensive screening, testing and tracing programme. Nothing came of the programme, as a report by the auditor-general has found.
Rwanda, with a population of 12.6-million, has 60,000 community health workers. Adjusting for its population, SA would need to employ 284,000 community health workers to achieve the same level of coverage as Rwanda.
Nigeria confirmed its first case of Ebola on July 23 2014. Later, the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote: “No-one believed effective contact tracing could be undertaken in a chaotic and
densely populated city like Lagos.” But world-class epidemiological detective work eventually linked all cases back to either direct or indirect contact with an air traveller from Liberia. “Contact tracing reached 100% in Lagos and 99.8% in Port Harcourt. WHO declared Nigeria free of Ebola virus transmission on 20 October,” the organisation said.
During the Covid-19 pandemic Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and
Taiwan have implemented effective contact tracing measures that have contained the pandemic. In a Project Syndicate article, Robert Skidelsky and Massimiliano Bolondi outlined the benefits: “You would avoid the ludicrous need to lock down a million people because infection had spread in a cluster of a hundred. The economic effects are incomparably milder.”
Economists such as Nobel laureate Paul Romer and Mariana Mazzucato have explained how universal testing of the whole population using rapid tests that deliver results in 15 minutes could bring the pandemic under control within a few months. The United Arab Emirates, with a population of 9.6-million, has done 32.3million tests.
Last week Austria, with 8.9million people, decided not to wait for the EU to fix its vaccination procurement disaster. It has come up with a plan to get life back to normal in three weeks, according to a Financial Times article. It will make available 3.5-million test kits to its citizens every week.
Since it will not achieve herd immunity during 2021, SA cannot put all its eggs in the vaccination basket. It has implement other pandemic control measures to prevent third and fourth waves during 2021 that would cause havoc in the economy and make every number in the budget irrelevant.
● Gqubule is founding director at the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation.