Covid stats show urgent need for vaccinations

DESPITE warnings of a spike in Covid-19 infections, the recovery rate remains high across the country... but doubt has been cast on the validity of the official Covid-19 statistics.

According to the Department of Health, as of Thursday last week, the country's cumulative recoveries stood at 1 496 756, representing a recovery rate of 95 per cent.

Also as of Thursday, the department reported 55 new Covid-19 related deaths, bringing the total to 53 995.

In 24 hours, 1 569 infections were also reported, with more than 1.5 million positive cases identified since the start of the pandemic.

The statistics on Friday showed that KZN recorded 70 new cases, with the King Cetshwayo district ranking the third-highest in KZN in terms of infections, with 29 110 positive cases.

The province continues to rank the second highest in terms of the number of laboratory-confirmed cases countrywide, contributing 21 per cent of the country's infection rate.

However, the average number of cases recorded in the past seven days declined to below 100 cases per day.

Urgency needed

The number of hospital admissions continues to decline with a decrease in the number of new cases in both the public and private sectors.

Professor Shabir Madhi, a professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Medical Research Council Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit (VIDA), was a guest on PSG's latest Think Big webinar last week where he said official figures are a vast underestimation of reality.

'South Africa's excess mortality indicates that more than 150 000 people have likely died from Covid-19.

'This shows how potent the virus is and how unsuccessful our efforts to contain it have been,' Madhi said.

The professor said that South Africa urgently needed to begin vaccinating high-risk individuals.

So far, the government has ordered 30 million of the two-dose vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

In addition to the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) shots, it should be sufficient to inoculate more than two thirds of the nation's 60 million population.

So far, 292 623 health workers have been vaccinated.

Dispensing shots to people over 60 years and other vulnerable groups is expected to get under way on 17 May after delivery of the J&J vaccines on Monday.