9,420 confirmed coronavirus cases in South Africa, as deaths climb to 186
Minister of Health Dr Zweli Mkhize has announced that there are now 9,420 confirmed cases of coronavirus in South Africa.
This is an increase of 525 from the 8,895 cases reported on Friday.
Dr Mkhize said in a statement on Saturday (9 May), that the total number of deaths has increased by eight, to 186. A total of 324,079 tests have been conducted, up from 307,752 conducted before.
Globally, the number of coronavirus cases passed the 4 million mark, with deaths now over 275,000.
@DrZweliMkhize says eight more people have died from #Covid_19. The latest figures show that 324,079 tests have been conducted to date and 9420 have been found positive.
EC – 1078
FS – 134
GP – 1910
KZN – 1308
LMP – 51
MP – 61
NW – 41
NC – 28
WC – 4809#COVID #day44oflockdown— Department of Health: COVID-19 (@COVID_19_ZA) May 9, 2020
The World Health Organisation has warned that as many as 190,000 Africans could lose their lives to the coronavirus in the first year, if the outbreak in countries cannot be contained.
However, some hope prevails on the continent – which has not yet seen infection numbers similar to those on other continents – as it has experience in dealing with deadly diseases.
HIV/Aids, Lassa fever, and tuberculosis are just some of the communicable diseases that African health experts are used to dealing with, and many realised the danger of the coronavirus as soon as they saw the case counts rising in China and Europe, Bloomberg reports.
According to Dr Petronella Mugoni, a Pretoria-based public health communications specialist who researched the community response during the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the key lies in rapid response, with accurate information being dispersed.
“In Congo, women were more affected by Ebola for a variety of reasons: They have traditionally had greater participation in care-giving, child care and burial practices. They were also likely to be more resistant to accept health messages early on in the response,” she said.
“The assumption is always that, if you reach women with health information, you reach the whole household. So you need to find ways to engage creatively with women. In Congo, a lot of work was being done with hairdressers. If you educate them and get their buy-in, they can get that information to a larger public.”
“Covid-19 is an abstraction for many people. In the early stages, when each region in southern Africa got cases, a lot of time was spent debunking myths. ‘Covid-19 does not affect black people, Covid-19 is manufactured to kill black people, you can cure yourself if you drink a lot of alcohol’ — those were some of the things we saw on social media.”
“That’s why a standardised response on a national level is critical and the messaging has to be strong.”
Vaccine
Many hopes of life returning to some semblance of normal rests in scientists and doctors finding an effective vaccine to fight the virus.
Authorities and experts have pegged the timeline for this at between 12 to 18 months.
However, according to Marcos E. García-Ojeda, professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Merced, while there are a number of hopeful vaccine candidates, the world is still some way off from having them ready – and a lot still stands in the way of them even being viable.
“No vaccines have made it through Phase 1 or Phase 2 trials yet, and Phase 3 trials generally take between one and four years. If researchers get lucky and one of these first vaccines is both safe and effective, we are still at least a year away from knowing that. At that point manufacturers would need to start producing and distributing the vaccine at a massive scale.
“It is unclear what percent of the population would need to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, but in general, you need to immunise between 80% and 95% of the population to have effective herd immunity.”
Depending on what the virus does in the coming months, that might not be necessary, but if it is, that’s 260-300 million people in the US alone, the professor said.
“Researchers are doing everything they can to develop a vaccine as fast as possible while still making sure it is effective and safe. Manufacturers can help by preparing flexible systems that could be ready to produce whichever candidate gets across the finish line first,” he said.
Read: What needs to go right to get a coronavirus vaccine in 12-18 months
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