COVID-19 and the uniqueness of South Africa

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a bat-borne betacoronavirus, was first identified in December 2019 from bronchoalveolar lavage specimens obtained from five patients in Wuhan, China who presented with severe community-acquired pneumonia of unknown aetiology. In February 2020, the disease caused by this virus was designated COVID-19. The number of cases spread rapidly throughout the world and was labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020, with the first case in South Africa reported on 5 March 2020 in a traveller returning from Italy. To date there have been 10,015 cases in South Africa and 194 deaths