SA’s excess deaths: what is known and where the gaps are
Health department numbers reflect those known to have died and positive cases, but miss many fatalities
In the 2000s, experts from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the SA Medical Research Council (SAMRC) built a system to track Aids mortality on a monthly and a yearly basis, using data from the department of home affairs. In 2020, researchers built on this system to track Covid-19 deaths in SA. Now, SA is one of few countries in the developing world that have managed to build a near-real time mortality tracking system. The SAMRC publishes a weekly report (https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa) on deaths in the country. The Conversation’s Ina Skosana spoke to demographer Tom Moultrie about what the data shows...
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