Faizel Patel – 18/08/2020
News24 investigative journalist Kyle Cowan says as COVID-19 surged in the various provinces in South Africa, the number of excess deaths also increased.
The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) has recently published a report which included information on both natural and unnatural deaths registered on the national population register.
Natural deaths include age, disease and infection.
Cowan says findings show that by the second week of July, there were 59% more deaths from natural causes than there would have been expected based on historical data.
He says researchers have indicated that the excess deaths start increasing at the same time that COVID-19 is spreading through a community.
“What we need to try and understand and this is what researchers are working very hard to do, is to understand what factors confirmed that people are dying more from natural courses, around the same time that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire through a community.”
Cowan says the research is very important to gauge the mortality rate of the country.
“People are dying and we don’t know why. The Department of Health is not classifying these deaths as COVID-19 deaths. So what are we left with? We are left with people essentially dying at home or dying outside of hospitals from natural courses and there is no laboratory test for COVID-19 to confirm that this person had contracted the disease.”
Cowan says a directive issued by the health department in August compels a body to be tested for COVID-19 when a person dies.
Listen to the interview with Kyle Cowan
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