Numsa’s letter to Ramaphosa points to some hair-raising suspicions

In an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has questioned the Covid-19 statistic numbers put forwarded by government, saying “the numbers simply don’t add up”.

Numsa calling for answers from the president argue that there remains no credible scientific explanation of why governments statistics on the coronavirus rate of infection and deaths in the country show a sudden drastic reduction.

“We are also not convinced that the deaths announced by government so far are anywhere near the truth.”

Over 570,000 confirmed cases of infections, the government further confirmed that over 11,000 people had succumbed to the virus.

“We are the fifth-most infected country on earth.

“The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) meanwhile published a report that from 6 May to 28 July more than 28,329 excess deaths had been recorded in South Africa compared to 7,257 government confirmed Covid-19 deaths.

“In the report, SAMRC further reports that trends in all provinces have plateaued or declined during the week ending on 4 August 2018. The number of weekly deaths, however, from natural causes are all significantly higher than predicted, except for Limpopo, which is now below the upper prediction bound.

“Compared with the predicted number of natural deaths from historical data in the week ending 4 August  2020, Free State had 118% more, Gauteng had 102% more, Eastern Cape had 96% more, KwaZulu-Natal had 69% more, Mpumalanga had 63% more, Northern Cape had 51% more, North West had 38% more, Western Cape had 37% more and Limpopo had 15% more.

“Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize said in response to reports on excess deaths; we now require that all sudden deaths and those that occur at home must have specimens taken for Covid-19 before a death certificate is issued.”

The union is surprised by how testing has recently dropped from more than 50,000 tests per day a couple of days ago to just below 12,000 tests by the 11 of August 2020.

Numsa said it requested that when Ramaphosa addresses the country, he should not create false impressions that government was winning the war against the pandemic.

Numsa highlighted that Ramaphosa must consider that taxis were allowed to load at 100% capacity, schools and certain sectors were being permitted to operate, which unfortunately offered more opportunities for the virus to spread.

“The country has not peaked yet. Can you kindly explain to us, where the government is getting the confidence to start to create the impression that we are winning the fight against the virus?”

This comes after experts have come out warning against complacency as the country paddles through the pandemic.

Professor Salim Abdool Karim noted the positive trends showing an improvement in how the pandemic was being managed by the country.

Karim’s remarks, however, noted that the pandemic may not be the last pandemic to hit the world as more pandemics or virus were a possibility going into the future. The trick was to monitor, surveil and prepare for future outcomes.

While the professor and other experts noted a possible resurfacing of infection numbers, Dr Harnan Zaldiva who was part of an envoy of doctors from Cuba, who descended into the country to help combat the pandemic stressed that lifting the lockdown possessed a risk of a “possible second wave of infections”, which could be worse.

Ramaphosa is expected to address the nation on whether the country will shift into Level 2 over the weekend after the Forum of South African Directors-General recommended to the National Command Council that South Africa’s lockdown regulations be eased.

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