About 12 million people in South Africa have “probably” been infected with COVID-19, but that startlingly high number has not caused a similarly high death rate and might indicate a widespread “level of immunity,” South African Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize says.
More than 20 percent of South Africa’s population of 58 million have had the coronavirus at some point, Mkhize said this week.
He cited studies that found the presence of COVID-19 antibodies in blood samples taken from parts of the population. The findings have prompted the government to launch a national study.
“South Africa has seen the surge receding and thus raises the question of the level of immunity that may already be existing in society,” he said.
Other studies have indicated that up to 40 percent of the population might be immune to the coronavirus, Mkhize said.
Some South African experts suggest that Africa’s most developed economy might be approaching herd immunity, but scientists believe at least 70 to 80 percent of a population needs to be immune before there is any effect. With COVID-19, it is unclear how long that immunity might last.
With confirmed COVID-19 cases dropping significantly, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday evening announced that the nation’s borders would reopen on Oct. 1, with visitors required to show negative test results within 72 hours of their departure.
Visitors would not be permitted from nations deemed at high risk, Ramaphosa said.
South Africa’s number of confirmed cases have dropped after a peak in late July that saw the nation recording up to 15,000 daily, raising fears that health services in some major cities might collapse.
South Africa is also seeing declines in hospital admissions, people in intensive care units and deaths attributed to COVID-19, Mkhize said.
“Consistency across these indicators reassures us that, indeed, we are in the midst of a trough in the pandemic,” he said.
Experts have tried for months to figure out why South Africa’s official death rate from COVID-19 is low — 15,705 people have died.
The number of South Africa’s actual deaths from COVID-19 is expected to be considerably higher.
“We think roughly 30,000 rather than 15,000 people have died from COVID-19,” said Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at Johannesburg’s University of the Witswatersrand. “We must appreciate that there had been many deaths outside of hospitals.”
Even with that higher level of deaths, South Africa’s mortality rate from COVID-19 appears relatively low. Some health experts think that millions in South Africa’s poor, densely populated townships might have generated an immunity because of the previous and frequent spread of other coronaviruses, including those that cause the common cold and flu.
“They have been exposed, they developed this key cell immunity which helps them to fight the severe effects of COVID-19,” said Madhi, who is also lead researcher on a clinical trial in South Africa of the vaccine that the University of Oxford is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. “They may have achieved an underpinning immunity.”
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