2m deaths and counting

COVID: SECOND WAVE HITS MIDDLE CLASS AS DEATHS SPIKE TO OVER 2 MILLION GLOBALLY

➤ The coronavirus in just a year sowed chaos in the world with first and second waves, decimating economies, leading to a spike in the global death toll of over 2 million. In South Africa, it is now hitting the middle class especially hard, an expert says.

Pandemic pushes economically depressed country into ‘seriously deep trouble’.

Despite South Africa no longer being in the top 10 countries with the highest Covid-19 infections, it has a substantive epidemic and is drowning in a deep economic depression which may worsen significantly, experts say, as global deaths shot past two million this weekend.

South Africa now has the 16th highest Covid-19 infections in the world, contributing 1.4% (1 325 659) to the world total of 95 050 497 confirmed cases and 1.7% (35 851) of 2 032 847 deaths.

But this did not mean SA was doing better than other countries as other states have different testing strategies, population and seasons, said CEO of the SA Medical Research Council professor Glenda Gray.

Warmer seasons saw people going outside, she said. More infections could be expected in the northern hemisphere, as cold weather forced people to stay indoors.

World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas had seen a spike in cases due to multiple factors.

“This is because we are collectively not succeeding at breaking the chains of transmission at community level or within households. We need to close the gap between intent and implementation at the country and individual level because there’s immense pressure on hospitals,” he said on Friday.

Two million deaths later, it has become clear the virus was not discriminatory and the myth that it only infected rich people has been forgotten. SA’s rural areas have seen a spike in infections in the second wave, due to people travelling home from urban areas during the recent festive period.

“In the first wave… the middle class and rich were able to lock down safely. When summer came, middle-class kids got pandemic fatigue and went to rages and clubs and brought infection to the middle class,” Gray said.

“The beginning of the second wave was the function of the people who were able to escape the first wave, which was the middle-class people.”

SA’s economic future was uncertain as the country was in a deep depression which would lead to further job losses, said economist Dawie Roodt.

While the unemployment rate continued to dip, increasing by 2.2 million job losses in the third quarter of last year, South Africans would continue to get poorer this year, he said.

“We are in seriously deep trouble. We are not in a recession but in a deep depression and it doesn’t matter what the numbers tell you.

“We can’t use the normal way to assess economic performance because these are not normal circumstances,” Roodt said.

“In 2021, people will be poorer again.

“There will be a blip, compared to 2020, but the trajectory is that it is getting significantly worse.”

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