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Talking Points
Lockdown must go or else non-coronavirus mortality will outstrip COVID-19 deaths
While the lockdown bought some time to bolster health resources, it has is now setting up South Africa for even greater mortality from non-COVID...
Scientists 'deeply divided' over how UK should leave lockdown
The Sage committee of scientists advising the UK government has been split by “heated arguments” over how the country should leave lockdown. The Daily...
SA’s heritage of community workers critical to stemming COVID-19 tide
South Africa's impressive mass-screening and targeted testing response to COVID-19 has depended on teams of community workers already in place, detecting tuberculosis and bringing...
Taiwan controls COVID-19 with a 'surgical light-touch'
Taiwan — a small island, densely populated with 23m people, and just off the Chinese coast — recorded its first COVID-19 case in mid-January, yet with a...
Portugal's swift reaction to COVID-19 key to its low death and infection rate
On 29 February news that the author Luis Sepúlveda was fighting for his life after testing positive for COVID-19 in a Spanish hospital intensive...
SA lockdown merely a holding operation to buy time to build capacity
South Africa’s extended coronavirus lockdown is merely slowing down the infection rate to allow for the urgent continued expansion of its currently inadequate treatment...
COVID-19 exposes SA's 'covert' crisis in the medical device sector
The South African government's procurement policies favour imported medical devices over locally manufactured products and there has been little financial support to entrepreneurs to...
The US lesson: Let scientists take the lead
Epidemiologists must persuade people to upend their lives even when there’s scant evidence that they’re directly at risk, notes an article by Charles Duhigg...
Govt's forced quarantine plans come under scrutiny
While limitation of rights may occur in the public interest in the context of a pandemic, the SA government's plans forcibly to isolate...
SA's 'restrictive' COVID-19 testing regimen questioned
Who should be eligible for COVID-19 testing in South Africa? The answer to this differs depending on who you ask. According to a Spotlight...
Worrying statistics bring Sweden's laid-back approach into question
The laid-back Swedish model of dealing with COVID-19 has come under pressure as deaths rates start to rise, writes MedicalBrief.
With hundreds of cases confirmed...
Portugal's 'worst-case scenario' response has kept COVID-19 caseload low
The Portuguese government has attributed the country’s low coronavirus caseload to a swift, flexible “worst-case scenario” response and to the early closure of schools...
Under-detection and swamped systems bedevil data precision
Asymptomatic transmission, under-detection and the speed of the COVID-19 pandemic's progress, swamping health systems at times, has made accurate data collection difficult, writes MedicalBrief.
An...
Can China be made to pay restitution for COVID-19?
Ever since the Covid-19 outbreak started, there have been calls, especially from US politicians, for China to be held legally accountable for the enormous...
It's agility not health budget that's determined national success against COVID-19
It has been claimed that the UK has been left ill-prepared for this pandemic because so-called austerity has hollowed out public services. But, writes...
Nigeria's elites confronting the daily realities faced by their compatriots
As he ascended to power in that historic 2015 vote, President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) party made a raft of...
Poor reporting fans damaging African backlash over vaccine testing and usage
False media reports, based on social posts, that suggested that Africa will be a "guinea pig" for COVID-19 testing, led to a torrent of...
Criminalising the 'spreaders' does not work
‘We should think very carefully about whether criminalising the spread of the coronavirus will help or hurt South Africans as we battle the outbreak,’...
Debate rages over 'severely flawed' Imperial study that sparked the UK lockdown
Debate is raging over the Imperial College London study that predicted up to half a million COVID-19 deaths and sparked the UK lockdown, with...
Scepticism over Russia's low coronavirus numbers
A Russian doctor warns in The New Yorker that it is impossible to know the real situation in a country that claims fewer coronavirus...
Concern over Sweden's giant 'business as usual' experiment with COVID-19
Swedish children continue to pour through the gates of their schools and kindergartens as the Nordic nation stands increasingly alone in Europe in its...
When three epidemics collide: TB, HIV and COVID-19 in South Africa
Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV pose a significant burden on South Africa’s health system. And now there's the coronavirus.
There’s a close relationship between the TB...
COVID-19 and South Africa: The coming winter flood
An editorial on Politicsweb analyses the grim realities facing South Africa in the face of COVID-19 and concludes that it is unlikely that the...
COVID-19 pandemic could be shorter than expected – contrarian view from Nobel laureate
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and...
Lack of finality on CMS ban 'comes at expense of those most in need of medical care'
Given the appeals against the Council for Medical Schemes' decision to ban low-cost benefit options (LCBO) and the slow pace of discussions, it is...
Mbeki and Trump: A tale of two denialist presidents
Conspiracy theories, disregard for science and grandiosity are hallmarks of how the US president has handled the coronavirus pandemic — and his words are...
SA hospitals will struggle to cope with a likely exponential infection rate
In just over a week, the number of South Africans who have contracted the COVID-19 coronavirus has gone from one to 16, to 116....
Older people not being considered in national and global planning on COVID-19
The largest numbers of deaths will occur among older people in low and middle-income countries, yet the global response neglects this group, write researchers...
South Korea and Italy are contrasting case studies in dealing with pandemic
In Italy, millions are locked down and more than 1,000 people have died from the coronavirus. In South Korea, hit by the disease at...
Strategic approach to COVID-19: Making sense of the 'knowns unknowns'
For a government's strategic planners, what is not known is as important as what is known, when it comes to thinking about the coronavirus,...
'No surprise' that COVID-19 is taking long to affect Africa
It's not under-reporting, nor genetic resistance. The delay in coronavirus infections on the continent have to do with Africa's economic relationship with the world,...
Italy shows that draconian quarantine measures don't work in the West
Quarantine in China is a world away from the less-absolute and rather haphazard measures of Italy, writes The Telegraph columnist Ross Clark.
Clark writes...
COVID-19 will shine spotlight on inequality in SA's health sector
In developed countries, the strongest predictors of dying from COVID-19 are advanced age and pre-existing health conditions, writes Dr Tom Boyles on Daily Maverick....
Budget 'protects' NHI from cuts but Treasury hints at implementation delay
The National Health Insurance (NHI) is protected from government-wide budget cuts, according to the National Treasury. But there is also a hint in the...
Spain and Portugal should reconsider 'turning death into a medical treatment'
Spain and Portugal are moving towards legalising euthanasia. They should think again, writes Kevin Yuill who teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland...
Doctors prone to moral distress when caring for cognitively-impaired elderly
Compromised professional integrity, which correlates with burnout and depression, is often experienced by doctors treating older, cognitively-impaired adults who have surrogate decision-makers, a US...
Two men, two losses, two eras
The loss of any loved one is painful and the loss of a spouse is profound. How it is endured depends also on the...
Drug trial consent: Ethically and legally sound without triggering a nocebo effect
Patients need to be able to make informed consent when taking part in drug trials, writes University of Oxford's Jeremy Howick in The Conversation....
Many not grasping what NHI will entail – Afriforum
The travesty is not that income level determines access to quality healthcare, writes Dr Eugene Brink, of Afriforum, on Politicsweb. "The real travesty is...
CMS reversal on low-cost benefits amounts to 'Let them eat cake' — Agility CEO
The Council for Medical Schemes' abrupt prohibition of low-cost benefit options will have "far-reaching and harmful effects, not least on the poor which these...