Prof Salim Abdool Karim on Friday morning spoke about government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak during a webinar facilitated by the Centre for the Programme of Research in SA.
Abdool Karim, scientific director at the institution, touched on factors that have contributed to the increase in Covid-19 screenings and tests, and the role of data in tackling the further spread of the virus.
More than 95,060 tests have been conducted in the country.
Here’s a summary of his address in five telling quotes:
Nothing prepared SA for Covid-19
“In the early 90s we were worried about the flu pandemic and we put in place early-warning systems and a whole range of pandemic flu preparedness activities. In many ways, our country had already started preparing for a flu pandemic but nothing we did prepared us for this. We had no real idea at the time what was going to be needed by a respiratory virus, how fast it would move and how all-encompassing it would be.”
Impressive government response
“I'm impressed that the powers that be took this seriously. They didn't procrastinate. They were decisive, took the consequences of those decisions and they have taken us on a path where we're trying to understand what happened because we didn't get the epidemic [it wasn't discovered in SA].”
Mistakes are part of the process
“Whether we're right or wrong, time will tell. I don't claim that we're not making mistakes. If you make no mistakes when tackling a disease of this nature that means you're not being sufficiently proactive. It means you're not doing enough.”
Spike in testing during lockdown
“The community health-care workers have screened about a million people in the past week and have referred just over 10,000 for testing - and suddenly we have more tests to do. Those results, whatever they are, are now mixed up in passive reporting because we can't distinguish from active case-finding and passive case-finding. It's hard to. So when you compare the number of cases from the second and third weeks of the lockdown, we are not comparing apples with apples.”
The importance of data
“As part of the screening, we're using cellphone technology where community workers enter the information. When they press submit, the cellphone sends the location, not just that the person has been screened. Using data is how we will tackle this problem because we have information at our fingertips.”
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