WATCH: Glimmer of hope as more virus victims recover

There are glimmers of hope in the Covid catastrophe. In the past week alone, active cases countrywide have declined by 10%, while President Cyril Ramaphosa says the daily increase in infections appears to be stabilising, particularly in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Eastern Cape.

Ramaphosa said yesterday: “While it may be too soon to draw firm conclusions, this suggests that the prevention measures that South Africans have implemented are having an effect.”Since 27 July (and not count-ing the figures from Saturday), the number of active Covid cases across the country declined by just under 18,000, from 170,537 to 152,676, or around 10.6%.

The active case figures is calculated by taking the overall number of infections and then subtracting the numbers of people who have died and who have recovered. It is a crude estimation but gives a general indication of trends.

Over the weekend, the total number of confirmed infections in South Africa passed the half-million mark, to sit at 503 209 as of late Saturday night. Ramaphosa said South Africa’s recovery rate currently stands at around 68%. “Our case fatality rate – which is the number of deaths as a proportion of confirmed cases – remains at 1.6%, significantly lower than the global average.”

The death toll from Covid stood at 8 153 on Saturday night. He said that while the country has the fifth-highest number of total Covid-19 cases globally, “we have only the 36th highest number of deaths as a proportion of the population”. Ramaphosa said the national lockdown had worked because it “succeeded in delaying the spread of the virus by more than two months, preventing a sudden and uncontrolled increase in infections in late March.

“Had South Africans not acted together to prevent this outcome, our health system would have been overwhelmed,” he said. “While there are promising signs, now is not the time to let down our guard.”

But the South African Medical Association (Sama) cautioned against assuming that all was well when several factors put this data into question.

In the first place when you look at testing, there are thousands of deaths which are not being logged as Covid-19 deaths be-cause these people may be old and have died at home or they were not tested,” said Sama spokesperson Dr Akhtar Hussain.

He also expressed concern that the healthcare environment was becoming a significant vector of new infections because workers were forced to report for duty after testing positive for Covid-19.This has created fears that the true picture of how the pandemic is spreading in the country could be far worse.

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