Johannesburg – Data from the Department of Home Affairs has laid bare the destruction Covid-19, particularly the second wave, has had on families across the country.
While the department said it was not in a position to differentiate between natural deaths and Covid fatalities, the data show a huge spike in deaths in December 2020 and January 2021 compared to comparative periods.
The statistics from the department show that 38 620 deaths were registered in the country in December 2019 compared to 55 676 fatalities in December 2020. Home Affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza said 36 803 deaths were registered last month.
“Deaths registered for January 2021 are being consolidated and are unavailable at the moment. On 4 and 5 January 2021, the first two working days of the year, the department registered 10 982 deaths,” Qoza said.
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South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), in its weekly deaths report covering the period January 24-30 showed the number of natural deaths was beginning to decline.
“The weekly numbers of deaths of persons 1+ years of age from all causes has dropped for the third consecutive week to 15 192 in the week 4. The number of excess deaths of persons 1+ years from natural causes also dropped to 7 152 in week 4 [24-30 Jan 2021] after reaching a peak of 15 739 in week 2 [10-16 Jan 2021], and have decreased across all metropolitan areas and province. However, most are well above the upper prediction bound,” reads the report penned by SAMRC researchers.
Financial services group Sanlam this week said in 2020, R456-million in Covid-19-related claims were paid out by Sanlam Individual Life, with the majority allocated to death and funeral claims with over R426-million paid out.
Petrie Marx, the product actuary at Sanlam, said there were clear spikes in claims throughout the year.
“August was a big spike, with death and funeral claims double the amount paid from March to July. Payouts reflect the patterns of the pandemic and we will likely see another spike from December 2020 to February 2021, following the crest of the second wave.”
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the government was still committed to vaccinating 40-million people by year-end.
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The first consignment of 1-million doses arrived this week, another batch of 500 000 doses will be delivered this month. He also said they were not only getting vaccines from AstraZeneca – they will get 9-million doses from Johnson & Johnson, 20-million from Pfizer and 12-million from the Covax facility.
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