Metro-level planning needed for high-risk communities
The coronavirus could strike hardest where old age and poverty coincide
South Africans immediately knew that news of an infection in Khayelitsha heralded a turning of the tide in the Covid-19 pandemic’s footprint in the country. With a large number of poor people living in close proximity, often with limited access to basic services, the risk of contagion has been taken onto a new and troubling trajectory.
It is therefore wholly appropriate to pursue the mass screening and testing approach announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa — containment of the virus is a key objective before putting untenable demands on an already precarious health-care system. However, as in other countries — even the most developed economies in the world — mass screening and testing requires prioritisation, and this in turn requires modelling of where exactly Covid-19 poses the greatest risk to SA as a fragile nation, both from a health and an economic perspective...
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