All schools in South Africa will close from Wednesday as part of South Africa’s efforts to reduce transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Kathryn Cleary rounds up what we do and do not know about the virus in children.
How might COVID-19 exacerbate medicines shortages in South Africa and what measures are in place to mitigate the impact of shortages. Catherine Tomlinson investigates for Spotlight.
Professor Lynn Morris interim director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has a lifetime of experience fighting viruses. She has encountered HIV, Ebola, TB, Listeria, Klebsiella, a multitude of ‘lesser’ pathogens and now COVID-19. However, she thinks that COVID-19, the name given for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, presents one of the greatest challenges yet to both South Africa and the world.
Shortly after Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced South Africa’s latest tally of 13 confirmed COVID-19 cases – Spotlight got a glimpse of the isolation unit at Tygerberg Hospital where three patients are currently in isolation and awaiting test results to see if they are infected.
When Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku was sworn in last year, he committed to turn the department around – a department the Gauteng premier described as ‘on its knees’. Spotlight sat down with Masuku to talk about staff morale, COVID-19, NHI, Mamelodi Hospital, and more.
The so-called “London patient” is still HIV-free, 30 months after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Lancet HIV journal.
How worried should we be about COVID-19? How bad will it get? How do we place it in its proper context given the limited information we have about it?
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize says South Africa desperately needs to address the increase in the prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases as measures to address NCDs to date have not had enough of an impact.
As students in Wuhan anxiously await the go-ahead to fly home to South Africa, cabin fever sets in as their movements are severely restricted. They are isolated in their rooms and worry about the planned quarantine period.
Thanks to community-led monitoring in South Africa, we now have the data to back up the stories we have all heard about – early morning queues that last all day long when clinics fail to open on time and then also close early, writes Anele Yawa and Lotti Rutter.
Alicestine October buried herself in mountains of budget documents and spoke to the experts to figure out what Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s new budget means for health. Here is what she found.
After two months in constant lockdown, with the ever-persistent fear of being infected with the coronavirus, a Free State student can’t wait to return to South Africa – even if it means spending 21 days in quarantine.