Prognosis
South African Study Puts Covid Deaths Much Higher Than Official Toll
- Coronavirus accounts for almost all excess deaths, paper says
- As many as 2.8 million people may have been infected
Photographer: Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images
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South African hospitals likely under-reported the number of patients with Covid-19 and the death toll from the virus is probably much higher than the official figure, according to a study.
As many as 2.8 million people out of a population of 59 million may have had the virus and almost all of the country’s 62,056 excess deaths since the beginning of the year were probably caused by the pathogen, Alex van den Heever, chair of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, said in a paper this month. His research used data to Oct. 24. By that date, 658,171 infections and 15,907 deaths had been confirmed by the Health Ministry.