{"id":492381,"date":"2021-05-21T08:52:30","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T06:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=492381"},"modified":"2021-05-21T08:52:30","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T06:52:30","slug":"heres-how-many-people-are-dying-from-covid-19-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/492381\/heres-how-many-people-are-dying-from-covid-19-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how many people are dying from Covid-19 in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

While South Africa has seen an influx of Covid-19 cases as a third wave hits the country, official deaths attributed to the pandemic have climbed.<\/p>\n

On Thursday (20 May), the department of health announced that an additional 61 people had died of Covid-19. This follows the reporting of 167 deaths on Wednesday, 80 deaths on Tuesday, and 50 deaths on Monday.<\/p>\n

Weekly statistics collated by Jon Hopkins University and Our World in data shows that the country reached an inflection point at the start of May, and has seen a steady increase in mortalities since.<\/p>\n

However, this is still well below the 750-plus deaths that were reported daily during the peak of the country’s second covid-19 wave in mid-January<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Excess deaths\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Data from the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) shows that the weekly number of deaths from all causes also continued to increase in the week 9-15 May.<\/p>\n

Deaths recorded on the National Population Register are provided to the SAMRC on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n

These have been scaled up to estimate the actual number of deaths by accounting for the people who are not on the population register and the under-registration of deaths.<\/p>\n

The estimated numbers are compared with the number that would be expected based on the historical data from 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n

“The number of excess deaths of persons 1+ years from natural causes has continued to increase reaching 1,422 in Week 19 (9 – 15 May 2021), following the low in Week 11 (14-20 March) of 1,027,” the group said.<\/p>\n

“Since 3 May 2020, there has been a cumulative total of more than 160,000 excess deaths from natural causes of persons 1+ years of age of which more than 77,000 occurred in 2021.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Commenting on this week’s data, the SAMRC said that the numbers of deaths from natural causes in Free State and Northern Cape are concerningly high.<\/p>\n

It added that the North West, Gauteng and Mpumalanga are showing indications of an uptick in the past week.<\/p>\n

“As most of the metropolitan areas are tracking to the predicted numbers of natural deaths, the excess deaths appear to be a result of a slow burn in non-metro areas in the country,” it said.<\/p>\n

“The provinces with the highest numbers of excess deaths at the end of Week 19 re, in order, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Gauteng.”<\/p>\n

\n

Read: New data shows big spike in retrenchments after lockdown in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While South Africa has seen an influx of Covid-19 cases as a third wave hits the country, official deaths attributed to the pandemic has climbed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":409789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-492381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492381"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492429,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492381\/revisions\/492429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}