HomeTalking Points
Talking Points
Calls for expansion of bariatric surgery to lessen impact of COVID-19
Responding to growing body of evidence pointing towards obesity as a major risk factor for coronavirus, there have been calls for a rapid expansion...
COVID-19's long-term impact on surgery in SA
The coronavirus pandemic will potentially create a backlog of approximately 150,000 surgical procedures, taking almost two years to eradicate, write professors Bruce Biccard and...
South Africa's 8 coronavirus lessons for the rest of Africa
South Africa leads the continent in many ways and right now it is poised to lead Africa into the next, most dangerous phase of...
Wildly divergent projections muddy Western Cape waters
Business Day asks whether the Western Cape's dire COVID-19 statistics are skewed by its testing protocols or whether the province is experiencing a qualitatively...
Evidence shows that lockdown was a 'reckless' experiment
There is still not a shred of real proof that the planet's reckless stay-at-home experiment made any difference, writes Shirelle Jacobs in The Daily...
Norway and Sweden re-assess their initial COVID-19 lockdown strategies
In hindsight, Norway's political and health leaders say that they might have achieved the same effects and avoided some of the unfortunate impacts by...
Experts urge: Stop random COVID-19 testing and sort out the backlog
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a national crisis in South Africa, requiring a State of Disaster to be enforced. As frontline clinicians and public...
Venezuela's leaders accused of under-reporting COVID-19
It’s increasingly clear that Venezuela’s regime is using the pandemic to strengthen its hold on power, writes Stephania Taladrid for The New Yorker.
The New...
COVID has created uncertainty in dealing with infected corpses
As the coronavirus death toll has risen around the world, it has created an unprecedented challenge for the healthcare workers, forensics experts, and funeral...
Process to declare international public health emergency needs reform
The purpose of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) declaration is timely evidence-based action to limit emerging disease risks, write David Durrheim,...
COVID-19's symptom progression like a bizarre 7-week 'advent calendar'
A small but significant number of people are suffering from the “long tail” form of the virus, with “constantly shifting and bizarre symptoms”, writes...
How the risk of coronavirus compares with the risks of everyday life
Risk is integral to every activity, notes an analysis in the Daily Telegraph. So how does coronavirus compare to the dangers posed by everyday...
Africa can learn from US on how to respond — and not to respond — to COVID-19
As African policymakers wrestle with how to respond to COVID-19, it is fitting that the US, the wealthiest country in the world, should offer...
The case for the mandatory use of a COVID-19 tracing app
A Oxford University study recently found that the spread of COVID-19 was “too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing”, writes Sean welsh...
UK's COVID-19 modelling derided as 'totally unreliable' and a 'programming mess'
The COVID-19 modelling that sent Britain into lockdown, shutting the economy and leaving millions unemployed, has been slammed by a series of experts. The...
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...