South Africa is only expected to reach the peak of the Covid-19 coronavirus in August or September, but the Actuarial Society of SA has warned that as many as 48 000 people could die if the country fails to flatten the curve
South Africa is only expected to reach the peak of the Covid-19 coronavirus in August or September, but the Actuarial Society of SA has warned that as many as 48 000 people could die if the country fails to flatten the curve.
After a meeting with Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, as well as seven professors, epidemiologists and doctors working on the province’s response to the outbreak, Mkhize said it was clear that the province was a hotspot – and, as such, it required a containment strategy.Earlier in the week in Rustenburg, North West, Mkhize had said he was “pleased” with the countrywide screening of citizens, adding: “As of May 5, 8 216 605 citizens have been screened across the country.
“In this case, we are actually looking at how to reclassify each and every district so that we know what more we can do in which area.” Mkhize expressed the same sentiments yesterday at the meeting with Winde and the medical professionals. He said that a resolution taken at the meeting was that every patient testing positive in the province would be hospitalised, even if they were not sick [in other words, were asymptomatic].
“When we look at the Western Cape, case detection is much higher than in the rest of the country, particularly in the past two weeks. Overall, over the past two weeks, it has been over 10%, which is five times what the other provinces are picking up.” However, Begg said that the surge in cases was always going to come; it was just a matter of when – and it appeared that the Western Cape’s surge had come before the rest of the country.
Using a baseline scenario that assumes that one infected person is likely to infect three others, and that 75% of infected people present as asymptomatic, a team consisting of some of the country’s leading healthcare actuaries developed a model to assist their profession’s stakeholders in understanding the impact of Covid-19.
In this scenario, hospital bed usage would peak at 70 000 between August and September, and requirements for intensive care unit beds would be just over 10 000. Expected cumulative deaths stop short at just over 48 300.
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