SA’s natural deaths spike during the Covid-19 pandemic

A SOUTH African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) report has revealed that by the second week of July, the country had recorded 17 000 excess natural deaths.

This is a 59 per cent increase compared to previous years.

“The weekly death reports have revealed a huge discrepancy between the country’s confirmed Covid-19 deaths and a number of excess natural deaths,” said SAMRC’s chief specialist scientist, Professor Debbie Bradshaw in the report.

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Bradshaw said the gap between the number of Covid-19 deaths and the excess deaths is mostly high in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng.

“Excess is the deaths that are over and above what you would expect to have. It’s been used, particularly in looking at flu epidemics where there’s a sudden surge in the number of deaths that’s just beyond what you’d expect,” Bradshaw explained.

“It’s important for us to do more work to get some research done to find exactly what’s causing that. It could be that there are people with Covid who are not getting to health facilities, thereby not getting into the statistics. People dying at home whether it’s access to transport to get to a facility or choosing not to go to a health facility,” she said.

The research shows that between 6 May and 14 July this year there were 17 090 excess natural deaths.

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According to the report, 4 903 were reported in the Eastern Cape, 4 708 in Gauteng, 4 022 in the Western Cape and 2 074 in KwaZulu-Natal, 331 in Mpumalanga, 329 in Free State, 299 in Limpopo and 238 in the North West.

Bradshaw said the SAMRC has been receiving data from the Department of Home Affairs of all the registered deaths and for years, that has been painting a picture of the mortality trends annually.

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