COVID-19 (South Africa) – 2021/05/07

Today, one year ago, I wrote quite an extensive overview about what I observed happening in the Scandinavian countries. (I think it was a few days later that I started with my daily updates.) A year ago nobody knew what to expect and those who claim they knew, well…

Nevertheless, although I want to concentrate more on South Africa, it might be interesting to see how the four Scandinavian countries compared in terms of infection rates as well as the case fatality rate (CFR) one year ago and to see where these countries stand today.

Infection rates – (Last year’s figures in brackets)
Finland: 0.24% (1.84%)
Denmark: 0.33% (1.41%)
Norway: 0.36% (0.52%)
Sweden: 0.51% (2.3%)

Case Fatality Rate – (Last year’s figures in brackets)
Finland: 1.04% (4.52%)
Denmark: 0.97% (5.09%)
Norway: 0.66% (2.7%)
Sweden: 1.41% (13.55%)

If you would like to read this post from last year, this is the link where you will find it:
https://missionissues.wordpress.com/…/swedens-approach…/

In South Africa, things are not quite as positive (no pun intended) as a few weeks ago. Slowly but surely the infection rate is moving upwards again. Over the past eight days, the number of new infections per day per million of the population grew consistently from 19.52 to 25.82 yesterday. That is approximately 0.8 more per day. Using my benchmark of 50 new infections per million per day as the sign that we have entered a new wave, it is not impossible that we may enter a third wave by the end of May. The two provinces which already have more than 50 new cases per million per day are the Free State and Northern Cape. They now stand at 112 and 161 respectively. The other provinces are also on the rise. In all nine provinces, the infection rates are higher than last week. I received a message from a medical doctor in private practice in one of the larger towns in Mpumalanga, informing me that one of their hospitals are nearly full due to COVID-19 cases and two friends of mine in my hometown were hospitalised yesterday because of COVID-19.

For the moment the death rate in the entire country is still moving downwards with the daily average now standing at 41 (down from 48 last week). However, in four of the nine provinces, the death rates are already moving upwards and we know by now that, when the infection rate constantly moves upwards, then it will take only a week or two at the most for the death rate to follow suit.

Looking at the number of people in hospital and ICU in South Africa, we see that the number of people in hospitals went up to 3,993 (last week the number was 3,764) while those in ICU increased to 681 (compared to 620 last week).

As I often say: It’s not over until it’s over.