State may be jumping gun on relaxed measures

Mathematicians from University of Johannesburg (UJ) have warned that the government should not be too quick to relax social distancing measures put in place to combat Covid-19.

The UJ team comprises professor Farai Nyabadza, Dr Faraimunashe Chirove, Dr Maria Visaya and Williams Chukwu.

Together, they crunched the numbers and quantified the level of social distancing required to reduce pass-on rates of Covid-19 substantially.

Their mathematical modelling shows relaxing social distancing by 2% can result in a 23% rise in the number of cumulative cases, while increasing the levels of social distancing by 2% could reduce the number by about 18%.

Nyabadza’s work is based on the reasoning that current levels of social distancing may be inadequate, especially during this early stage of infection.

“There is a need for more aggressive and robust multi-control approaches that target reduction of the infection rate, increasing of social distancing levels, rapid detection of exposed cases and increasing the recovery of active cases need to be implemented simultaneously and optimised,” Nyabadza said.

The mathematician said social distancing removes any question people might have whether they or someone else has the infection.

“The demand for assessment of methods of control for Covid-19 in South Africa is overwhelming. Understanding the impact of these control measures requires knowledge and expertise drawn from various scientific disciplines including mathematical modelling. The role of mathematical models’ insights formed the national response to the pandemic.”

South Africa has moved to level 4 of its risk-adjusted strategy made up of five levels that determine the risk and infection rate nationally, and in each province, district and metro. On level 4, citizens can take walks, cycle and run between 6am and 9am within a 5km radius of their home as long as they wear a mask and practise social distancing.

There is a need for more aggressive and robust approaches