Head of Internal Medicine at Wits University Professor Pravin Manga, says South Africa will have a mild corona virus epidemic compared to the United States of America.
He says fewer people will die of corona in South Africa than the US, Italy and Spain. This is contained in the first clinical data on COVID-19 published by the Wits Journal of Clinical Medicine in South Africa.
The journal looks at various issues including treatment protocols for COVID19 and raises a number of ethical questions for health workers in the management of COVID-19 patients.
Manga says “if we look at all statistical data on COVID infection and your risk of dying, your risk of dying if you are under the age of 50 is very low, it’s less than half a percent and if we look at our south African demographics only 6% of our patients are over the age of 60”.
“Our median age in this country and this is official statistics is 29, so basically even if our population, if a vast majority of our population did get COVID it will be a relatively mild infection and the risk of dying is very small”, he said.
Source: sabc
Image: courtesy of Wits University
