Coronavirus: is it time for South Africans to panic?
In the absence of information and with so many unknowns, fear is spreading faster than the coronavirus. How worried should South Africans be?
06 February 2020 - 05:00
Ten thousand people dead. That’s the low estimate of how many Americans influenza killed between October and January 25, according to the US Centers for Disease Control. In SA, 6,000-11,000 die as a result of flu every year, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
At the time of going to press, 427 people had died from the novel coronavirus. The virus — which tends to kill older and already-sick people — has a suspected fatality rate of about 2%, substantially higher than flu’s 0.095%...
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