Half of South Africa's population has likely had COVID-19: estimates

World

Published: 2021-02-18 16:11

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 16:56


Source: CNBC
Source: CNBC

Two studies revealed that half of South Africa's 59 million people had apparently been infected with COVID-19. 

The study further indicated that the coronavirus has caused thousands of deaths that do not appear in the official statistics.

In January, samples taken from about 5,000 blood donors from four provinces in South Africa revealed that between 32 and 63 percent had antibodies to the coronavirus. The presence of antibodies in the blood allows to reveal whether a person has contracted a virus even after recovery.

The study, published last week, was conducted by the National Blood Center in South Africa.

The research is not yet complete, with the Blood Center confirming that the percentage of clinically confirmed cases is between two and three percent only.

The South African Medical Research Council said that more than 140,000 additional deaths have been recorded since May 2020.  

The country's leading private health insurance company, "Discovery," estimates that the proportion of those who have definitely died from this disease is about 90 percent, or 120,000 people.

However, official statistics indicate that South Africa has recorded only 48,500 deaths related to the Coronavirus, out of 1.5 million infections.

But these numbers are underestimated, says Emil Steppe, a statistician in Discovery.

He said in a phone call with Agence France-Presse Wednesday that "the number of deaths that are recorded is less than the reality in almost all countries of the world."

He added that "many people at risk of infection with the Covid virus suffer from other problems ... so it is difficult to always determine the cause," stressing that it is also easy to make mistakes in recording deaths at the height of the epidemic when "they run and the medical staff work hard to try to save lives."

The death rate associated with COVID-19 is about 0.4 percent in South Africa. Assuming that 120,000 people have died in Corona, this means that more than 30 million people have contracted the virus, according to his calculations, or about half of the population.

South Africa is facing a second wave of Corona, which is largely caused by a domestic mutation in the more contagious virus.

But recently, it began to record a decline in the spread of the virus, and the number of new cases decreased to about 2,000 per day, compared to more than 20,000 at the end of December.

The country launched a vaccination campaign on Wednesday with vaccines from the giant American pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson.