SA’s coronavirus restrictions had little effect on Covid-19 deaths after the initial hard lockdown because the measures were too blunt and timed too late to dampen provincial surges, concludes a study published in the latest edition of the SA Journal of Science.

Up to 280,000 people died from Covid-19 during SA’s first four waves of coronavirus infections, about three times more than official statistics show, the researchers estimated. “This places SA among the worse-suffering countries after allowing for the youthfulness of our population,” said study co-author Rob Dorrington, a researcher at UCT’s Centre for Actuarial Research...