
South Africa has recorded nearly 60% more natural deaths than expected in recent weeks, which suggests a much higher death toll from the coronavirus than officially reported.
According to the South African Medical Research Council’s latest report on weekly deaths, there have been more than 17 000 excess deaths in the weeks between 6 May and 14 July in the country.
Most of the excess deaths were in the Eastern Cape followed by Gauteng and the Western Cape.
South Africa is the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa with almost 422 000 cases and 6 343 deaths recorded until Friday.
The President of the South African Medical Research Council, Professor Glenda Gray says the increase in deaths could be attributed to COVID-19 and people not being able to access healthcare during the lockdown.
“And so we can say that there is an increase in death rates that associated with this epidemic and some of it will be because of COVID-19 and some will be because of dying in a COVID-19 area because you can’t access healthcare. So we have to try to delineate how much is COVID-19 specific and how much is related to other diseases.”
Professor Gray adds, “The SAMRC has been tracking mortality for decades in South Africa, and this system has identified excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 epidemic. These may be attributed to both COVID-19 deaths as well non-COVID-19 due to other diseases such as TB, HIV and non-communicable diseases, as health services are re-orientated to support this health crisis.”
In its weekly report, SAMRC’s Chief Specialist Scientist Prof Debbie Bradshaw said the timing and geographic pattern leaves no room to question whether this is associated with the COVID-19 epidemic.
“However, the weekly death reports have revealed a huge discrepancy between the country’s confirmed COVID-19 deaths and the number of excess natural deaths.”
-SABC NEWS