An 18-month cycle of 50 days of strict lockdown followed by 30 days of easing could peg SA's Covid-19 fatalities to just over 9,000 and allow the health system to cope, says an international team of researchers.
SA was one of 16 countries in which three scenarios were modelled by the Global Dynamic Interventions Strategies for Covid-19 Collaborative Group, led by University of Cambridge global health epidemiologist Rajiv Chowdhury.
Suppression measures lead to a faster reduction in the number of new infections by applying additional interventions such as strict physical distancing, including lockdown. How the three different strategies modelled by international researchers would affect the health system's ability to cope.Said Chowdhury: “Our models predict that dynamic cycles of 50-day suppression followed by a 30-day relaxation are effective at lowering the number of deaths significantly for all countries throughout the 18-month period.
“This should allow them to buy valuable time to shore up their health systems and increase efforts to develop new treatments or vaccines,” he said. The it modelled a cycle of 50-day mitigation measures followed by a 30-day relaxing. This would be likely to reduce the R number to 0.8 in all countries.
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