Prognosis
South Africa’s Excess Deaths Soar As New Virus Variant Spreads
- Covid-19 toll probably far higher than official data reflects
- Country has detected more than 1.4 million infections so far
A morgue attendant at a funeral and burial services company in Johannesburg on Jan. 22.
Photographer: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
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South Africa’s death toll from Covid-19 is likely to be far higher than the official number of 40,874 reported so far, with the country struggling to contain a new, more transmittable variant of the virus that’s caused alarm globally.
There were 112,280 more deaths from natural causes than would have been expected between May 6 and Jan. 16, the South African Medical Research Council said in its latest excess death report published on Sunday. Weekly excess deaths, a measure of mortality exceeding historical averages, reached a record 16,093 by Jan. 10, the highest since the epidemic struck in March.