Many of you watched the televised address made President Ramaphosa, where he laid out South Africa’s response to the growing Coronavirus situation. The President is attempting care for the needs of both the country and its citizens, and has implemented certain restrictions from there. If you would like to see more about his comments, here is a link to a comprehensive list.

In addition, here is some general information about the Coronavirus from a medical professional who is a friend to our community, that is quite enlightening. Please read it at your convenience:

“Two very important points to kick off with:

1. This is a new virus in humans, we’ve only had 3 months to try understand it. We don’t know much about it yet, a lot will be discovered in the next few months, some of which may change the course of this.

2. Panic is not helpful, but being wise could save a huge amount of lives in the next few months (maybe years). There are some frightening numbers below, but there are some clear wins as well.

At the moment there are 133,000 confirmed cases and 5,000 deaths. That doesn’t sound like a lot considering it’s a very tiny portion of the world’s population and the numbers are very small compared to flu (influenza) - which infects a billion people annually and kills up to 500,000 people a year. The big difference is COVID-19 is just starting, flu is already well established. Also, it’s very clear that the number of officially confirmed cases is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

A few important differences between influenza and COVID-19:

- The infection rate of COVID-19 appears to be double that of influenza, so it spreads far more aggressively. Italy went from 9 cases to 15,000 cases in 20 days - that’s not a long time. If they follow Hubei’s growth trajectory, they could hit 30,000 cases in 5 or 6 days. Unfortunately, that’s not even the full story - there are likely many multiples more cases that are undiagnosed.

- The death rate of COVID-19 is somewhere between 1% and 3% (WHO says 3.4%, but that will likely come down a bit). Influenza’s death rate is 0.1%, so COVID-19 is 10x to 30x higher… If you do the maths on this, 5 million to 15 million people could die if COVID-19 got to a point where it infected as many people as influenza. It may continue beyond that as well.

- The incubation period of COVID-19 is far longer than influenza (5 to 14 days vs 2 to 3 days). This is important as people can travel around the world and, because they are infective before the symptoms show, they can infect many people before the even know they have something.

- There is some baseline immunity for influenza, there is currently none for COVID-19, so many more people could be infected.

- COVID-19 appears to be spread by airborne route, where influenza is not. 

With COVID-19, about 81% of people who are infected have mild (or no symptoms), 14% have severe symptoms and 5% will end up critical. Unfortunately, infected people with no symptoms can still infect others, another point that makes this a tricky virus to control. The 14% that are severe will generally require hospitalisation and the 5% that are critical will require ventilation (much higher numbers than influenza again). This will place a huge burden on the healthcare system, there is nowhere near enough capacity. This could make worsen the death rate and have knock on effects for people with other medical needs.

It’s become very clear that the mortality rates are far higher in older people, young children are practically spared. The mortality rate in males is more than double that of females as well. Here’s a breakdown of the current mortality rates for each age bracket:

• 80 and older: 15%

• 70 to 79: 8%

• 60 to 69: 3.6% 

• 50 to 59: 1.3%

• 40 to 49: 0.4%

• 0 to 39: 0.2%

Smokers (and vapers) are hit hard, many older men in China and loads of people in Italy and a few other EU countries have high smoking rates (UK has quite low smoking rates). So, quit now… 

People with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease, high blood pressure and cancer also have far higher mortality rates. In short, healthy people below 50 will generally be fine, but a lot of the more frail people will die. It’s our parents and grand-parents we must be worried about. They need to look after themselves even more than the rest of us.

The virus does seem to spread more effectively in cold, dry climates - the southern hemisphere countries have very few cases so far. Of course, the tides could turn with the seasons - time will tell. South Africa has 17 confirmed cases and most of these were infected overseas, but this will likely change - although we can’t be sure how quickly. 

There are currently no vaccines nor any effective medication, it will likely be a while before anything arrives. COVID-19 is an RNA virus, these mutate quickly - this will make it tricky to manage as well.

So… What can we do?

Slow it down. This helps for a number of reasons; if we can keep the numbers lower at any given point the healthcare system can potentially keep up, we could discover a lot of useful info about the virus which could help us manage it and a vaccine / medication could be invented and trialed before too many people die. There’s a great graph that explains this well, will send that now.

How do we slow it down? 

There are a few simple things of course; effective hand washing, don’t touch your face, don’t sneeze or cough straight out into the air and clean the surfaces (and everything that is touched - phones, handles etc.) in your houses and offices regularly. Stay healthy, eat well, get enough sleep, get some exercise…

The next level is to create social distance, create less opportunity for the virus to spread - reduce the interactions, interaction time and number of times people share a confined area (room, hotel, offices, taxis, trains etc.). This is something that can be done pretty easily in some cases - less face-to-face meetings, work at home if possible and avoid social scenarios. Definitely self-isolate if you have any flu-like symptoms, even if it’s unlikely COVID-19, it’s not worth passing anything on now that will confound or make things worse. 

Full quarantine is the last resort, that’s where Italy is right now. China did this very well, they have very few new cases a day, but this my be undone if they lift the restrictions…

Unfortunately, the economy is going to take a beating, we need to try balance this a little by being sensible.

For now, in South Africa, working from the office is still fine, try have less meetings with clients - chat over the phone or via telecons. We will monitor the scenario closely and change the plan when needed. Take your laptops home every night…

This is not going to be a sprint, it’s definitely a marathon, unless we get very lucky!”