{"id":12,"date":"2020-12-26T17:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-26T17:44:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-12-09T09:15:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:15:52","slug":"2020-wrap-up-of-south-african-covid-19-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/2020\/12\/2020-wrap-up-of-south-african-covid-19-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 wrap-up of South African COVID-19 deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;4 short months ago I collected some data on the <a href=\"https:\/\/negfeedback.blogspot.com\/2020\/08\/south-african-covid-19-deaths-in-context.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">causes of death in South Africa<\/a>, placing the deaths attributed to COVID-19 in context, mostly for my own edification. Even then, when they numbered less than half of what they are now, it was clear that this was a serious concern. At the time, I neglected some analysis due to a lack of time. Notably I didn&#8217;t normalise by population, even though the figures I quoted were from different years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve taken advantage of a more relaxed schedule to extend my analysis to the table below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Deaths in South Africa\" aria-label=\"Table\" id=\"datawrapper-chart-sQSss\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/sQSss\/1\/\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border: none;\" width=\"845\" height=\"725\" data-external=\"1\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<p>I will repeat my sources below to save you from paging through to the previous post. As before I must mention that the &#8220;influenza and pneumonia&#8221; figures for 2017 were without significant countermeasures like lockdowns or mask wearing.<\/p>\n<p>Note that the population normalisation doesn&#8217;t affect the ranking.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In order to keep things simple, I&#8217;ve kept the original 2017 death figures up, even though some of the numbers could be updated, notably the number for TB, which appears to have grown to around 64 000 in 2019 [5] (although I believe these figures are not attributing utlimate causes quite the same way).<\/p>\n<p>With the second surge of deaths, the disease has moved up to be comfortably above the HIV deaths in 2017, roughly equal to all other viral diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Comparing daily rates is also revealing. In 2017, a total of&nbsp;465286 deaths were recorded, an average daily death rate of around 1274. At the time of my writing this, the average death rate per day from COVID-19 is around 280 and climbing, which would have been a full 20 % of these deaths.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Sources<\/h2>\n<div>\n<ol>\n<li>StatSA&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/?page_id=1854&amp;PPN=P0309.3&amp;SCH=7914\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">P0309.3 &#8211; Mortality and causes of death in South Africa: Findings from death notification, 2017<\/a>&nbsp;(Published March 2020). All figures are for underlying cause of death<sup>\u2020<\/sup><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldometers.info\/coronavirus\/country\/south-africa\/\">Worldometer corona tracker<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Dept of Transport&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/documents\/State%20of%20Road%20Safety%20Report%202019.pdf\">State of Road Safety Report: Calendar January &#8211; December 2018<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Africa Check&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/africacheck.org\/factsheets\/factsheet-south-africas-crime-statistics-for-2019-20\/\">FACTSHEET: South Africa&#8217;s Crime Statistics for 2019\/20<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/tbsouthafrica.org.za\/resources\/who-global-tuberculosis-report-2019#tbdeaths\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2019<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Footnotes<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div>\u2020&nbsp;Underlying cause of death&nbsp;(previously known as primary cause) is the disease or injury that initiated the sequence of events leading directly to death; or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury. [1]<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;4 short months ago I collected some data on the causes of death in South Africa, placing the deaths attributed to COVID-19 in context, mostly for my own edification. Even then, when they numbered less than half of what they are now, it was clear that this was a serious concern. At the time, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}