LETTER: Covid inquiry must be open to the public

I second Shabir Madhi’s call for an independent and urgent review of SA’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic (“Why it is time for the national coronavirus command council to go”, February 3).

The figure for Covid-related deaths — in the order of 300,000 — becomes even more disturbing when the international comparison takes account of the relative youth of our population (which averages about 30 years). Moreover, our current level of vaccination is appalling, with under 28% of the total population fully vaccinated, compared with nearly 75% for upper-middle-income countries generally.

With vaccination there is considerable bias against black people and those living away from suburbs; thus, social justice becomes an added issue. As one of the authors of the government’s official country study on the pandemic, I have no confidence that this will provide the necessary independence or urgency.

An inquiry should be accessible to the public and have the right to subpoena evidence. Further, an inquiry must be open to participation by social scientists. The low level of vaccination is primarily a question for social science, whose practitioners would also have something valuable to say about deaths if the relevant data was made publicly available.

Unfortunately, policy responses have treated the pandemic as a problem for medical scientists and politicians. Other expertise has been squeezed to the margins, leading to unnecessary loss of life. This predisposition developed against views advanced by the SA Medical Journal and the Academy of Science, which represents all senior academic researchers in the country.

For some reason, never justified by the government, the ministerial advisory committee on social change was stuffed full of clerics and excluded professional social scientists completely. 

Prof Kate Alexander
University of Johannesburg

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