SARS-CoV-2 - The African Mirror

Aug

2022

How the pandemic lockdown in South Africa affected mental health

WHEN SARS-CoV-2 emerged in South Africa, the country took measures to restrict people’s movements and activities, to slow the spread of infections. There were various levels of restrictions, the most severe being in place in March and April 2020. During this “hard lockdown”, many people in South Africa really struggled. Not only did they have financial difficulties but the lockdown took an emotional and mental toll. The common themes, no matter where people lived, were feelings of anxiety, frustration and isolation. And as lockdown went on, those feelings got worse. Author CAROLINE SOUTHEY, Founding Editor, The Conversation In today’s episode…

May

2022

By The African Mirror

How a desire to help led me to track COVID numbers and make sense of them through graphs

COVID-19

AS COVID took hold in South Africa, daily case numbers grew. But the numbers people were seeing online or on news channels did not tell the full story of the pandemic. Ridhwaan Suliman works as a computational modelling researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. He started tracking the numbers in his personal capacity. Using publicly available data from daily case numbers, testing rates, hospitalisations and deaths, he mapped the trends that emerged over time. After initially sharing some graphs with a few friends and family, he decided to post these on Twitter. He started with about 90…

May

2022

By The African Mirror

How South Africa is integrating COVID into routine care for mothers and babies

COVID-19

COVID-19 has had a direct impact on maternal mortality. Pregnant women are not at an increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2. But data show they are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease. This is especially the case in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, and this is still the case two years into the pandemic. Authors JEANNETTE WESSELS, Researcher, Centre for Maternal, Fetal, Newborn and Child Health Care Strategies, University of Pretoria UTE FEUCHT, Associate Professor in Paediatrics, University of Pretoria In South Africa, this risk equated to an additional 16 COVID-19-related maternal deaths per 100,000 live births,…

Apr

2022

By The African Mirror

South Africa has lifted most COVID-19 restrictions. But risks remain

COVID-19

IN early April South Africa ended most of the mandatory measures it put in place to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The country terminated its “state of disaster” and moved to a transitional phase. For 30 days certain measures will remain in place. These include wearing face masks in indoor public spaces, restrictions on gatherings as well as proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test for people travelling to the country. To find out more about the implication of this decision and the reasoning behind it, The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana spoke to Harsha Somaroo, who has been supporting…

Mar

2022

By The African Mirror

COVID: a two-year journey through lockdowns, lives lost and life-saving research

COVID-19

IT'S been two years since the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and its disease, COVID-19 were declared a global public health emergency. During this period, there have been over 433 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including over 6 million deaths, reported to the World Health Organization. The pandemic changed life across the globe, through lockdowns, sickness and lives lost. It also sparked life-saving research and analysis. The Conversation Africa brings you some of the highlights of its coverage of variants, vaccines, lockdowns and their effects over the period – and what what’s been learned about health systems, policy making and humanity. Authors…

Mar

2022

By The African Mirror

The coronavirus in Nigeria has its own family history: keeping track is vital

COVID-19

NIGERIA recorded its first case of SARS-CoV-2 on 27 February 2020, and within five months at least one case had been reported in all states across the country. Author OLUBUSUYI MOSES ADEWUMI, Virologist , University of Ibadan By 11 March 2020, SARS-CoV-2 had infected over 100,000 people in at least 100 countries. The World Health Organisation consequently declared it a pandemic. Building on the success of Nigeria’s response to Ebola, the Nigerian government immediately activated a national Incident Control Centre. This was to enable routine surveillance, diagnosis, and prompt reporting of COVID-19 cases. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control swiftly…

Mar

2022

By The African Mirror

New COVID data: South Africa has arrived at the recovery stage of the pandemic

COVID-19

A recently published South African study set out to determine sero-positivity against SARS-CoV-2 before the fourth wave of COVID-19, in which the omicron variant was dominant. Sero-positivity measures the presence of antibodies against the virus; it indicates past infection. The study focused on Gauteng, the country’s economic hub. Ozayr Patel asked Shabir Madhi to unpack the results and explain why the findings suggest that South Africa has reached a turning point in the pandemic. Author SHABIR A. MADHI, Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious…

Feb

2022

By The African Mirror

COVID infection of three lions and a puma in private South African zoo points to need for wider surveillance

COVID-19

Authors ADRIANO MENDES, Post-Doctoral Research fellow, University of Pretoria AMY STRYDOM, Scientist, German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment KATJA KOEPPEL, Associate Professor Wildlife Health, University of Pretoria MARIETJIE VENTER, Head: Zoonotic, Arbo and Respiratory Virus Programme, Professor, Department Medical Virology, University of Pretoria SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of the disease we know as COVID-19. While this disease has wreaked havoc on every human population worldwide, what isn’t as well appreciated is that the virus can also infect a range of animals. The World Organisation for Animal Health) has reported outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 in cats, dogs, ferrets, minks, otters, lions, tigers,…

Aug

2021

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 herd immunity? It’s not going to happen, so what next?

COVID-19

ANY notion that COVID-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. This is what happened in the flu epidemic of 1918. SHABIR A. MADHI, Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand In addition, very few scientists predicted that we would see the…

Aug

2021

By The African Mirror

Keep the politics out of scientific pursuit for COVID-19 origin

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ABBEY MAKOE LEADING political elites in South Africa have joined a chorus of global scientists by expressing public support for the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to keep politics out of the Covid-19 origin-tracing studies. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) in a joint study with the Chinese health authorities launched a 34-member team of experts from around the world to investigate the actual origins of SARS-Cov-2. The study followed repeated unsubstantiated claims in some sections of the Western media that the Covid-19 virus first emerged through a leak in a Wuhan laboratory in China. In March this year, the joint…