Despite the unknown realities of the Covid-19 second wave spread in 2021, Cornerstone Institute is continuing with online teaching and learning...
Issued by Cornerstone Institute 4 May 2021
Coronavirus vaccines have been developed and deployed in record time, but as global rollout has progressed, too few doses have been made available in low-income countries...
Adrian Hill 26 Apr 2021
South Africa's Covid-19 death rate is likely to be three times higher than the official figures
At the end of 2020, there was a strong hope that high levels of vaccination would see humanity finally gain the upper hand over SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19...
Salim Abdool Karim 6 Apr 2021
Dr Msandeni Chiume Kayuni found herself in the middle of a supply crisis as Covid-19 spread to Africa in April 2020...
Rebecca Richards-Kortum & Theresa Mkandawire 31 Mar 2021
Being a new virus, Covid-19 has evoked a great deal of uncertainty around which treatments will be beneficial to patients...
Scientists are predicting that the social gatherings associated with the Easter weekend will trigger the third wave of Covid-19, just as the country heads into winter. What are the lessons learned from the second wave?
The Covid-19 strain, known as the South African variant, that became dominant in the country towards the end of 2020 may have emerged from the coast of the Eastern Cape after the first wave of pandemic. ..
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has resulted in many fault lines emerging in our societies. One of the key ones is that of behaviour change...
Jay Bhagwan 18 Mar 2021
A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, global testing capacity sadly mimics countries' GDP per capita. Testing requires money, and rich countries can spend more on tests than middle-income and poor countries...
Dr Morgan Mkhatshwa, head of operations at Bonitas Medical Fund, unpacks the differences and similarities between 'flu' and Covid-19, how it affects your body and offers compelling reasons why you should consider getting the flu vaccine this year...
Issued by Bonitas 8 Mar 2021
Interim results from clinical trials of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be presented to the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday 26 February in an effort to obtain an emergency licence for its distribution...
Michael Cherry 25 Feb 2021
Research has found that viruses that cause diseases such as the common cold, measles, or Covid-19 can hijack an existing molecular process in the cell in order to block the body's antiviral immune response to a viral infection...
University of Cape Town (UCT) researchers are expected to start a phase one clinical trial of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate, hAd5 T-cell, later this month...
Michael Cherry 19 Feb 2021
The recent appearance of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus causing Covid-19 infections), that may be associated with increased transmission of the virus and disease severity...
Ed Rybicki, Anna-Lise Williamson, Don Cowan & Stephanie G Burton 17 Feb 2021
A study led by authors from the National Blood Service, shows that a large percentage of the population has likely already been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and that there are striking differences in prevalence between blacks and whites.
Michael Cherry and Nathan Geffen 15 Feb 2021
LONDON - Almost all people previously infected with Covid-19 have high levels of antibodies for at least six months that are likely to protect them from reinfection with the disease, results of a major UK study showed...
Kate Kelland 9 Feb 2021
News reports on mutated, more virulant, strains of the virus most likely conjures movie-like images of an invisible, indestructible enemy causing massive disruption. The reality is fortunately much less dramatic...
Felicity Burt, Dominique Goedhals & Sabeeha Vawda 4 Feb 2021
As South Africa finds itself starting to move out of the second wave of a Covid-19 outbreak, over eight million Covid tests have been carried out in the public and private sector since the start of the pandemic...
Issued by Bonitas 2 Feb 2021
To fast track the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a broad range of candidate Covid-19 vaccines are being investigated...
Ina Skosana 2 Feb 2021
South Africa is currently riding the second wave of Covid-19 infections, driven by 501.V2 - a particularly virulent strain of the virus...
Late last year the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) led by the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp) identified a rapidly spreading new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19...
Willem Hanekom & Tulio de Oliveira 25 Jan 2021
Just over a year after the coronavirus was first reported in China countries are still reeling from its effects. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes Covid-19 disease...
Puleng Segalo, Adeyemi Oladapo Arem, Pradeep Kumar 20 Jan 2021
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the legalities of mandatory Covid-19 vaccine policies. Here, we consider whether compulsory testing of employees for the coronavirus is allowed...
Jason Whyte 19 Jan 2021
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, many doctors, researchers, journalists and public health officials spent considerable energy describing how the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not "just another flu"...
James Stent 18 Jan 2021
There is a clamour by some people for ivermectin to be approved by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) to treat Covid-19...
Rufaro Samanga 15 Jan 2021
In a move to curb the spread of Covid-19, South Africa has moved to adjusted Level 3 from Level 1 with immediate effect, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday evening, 28 December...
A bold statement indeed, but one backed by science. Daikin can now confidently confirm the effectiveness of their patented streamer technology, which successfully inactivates more than 99.9% of the novel coronavirus after irradiating the virus for three hours...
Blood samples are to be taken from up to 19,000 people across all provinces, in the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) two-phase nationwide Covid-19 seroprevalence survey...
James Stent 11 Dec 2020
Research on vaccines for the SARS and MERS viruses paved the way for more rapid development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine allowing candidate vaccines to reach clinical trial stages in record time...
SARS-CoV-2 antibody surveys can be used to more accurately estimate how many people in the country have been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. A few such surveys are underway in South Africa...
James Stent 4 Dec 2020
Scientists are working around the clock to develop and test vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of Covid-19...
Benjamin Kagina 2 Dec 2020
Following these simple steps can help to keep your holiday memorable in the best possible way...
Thea van de Mortel 30 Nov 2020
South Africa has a long tradition of using plants for medicinal purposes. Some of these, such as Aloe ferox, Sutherlandia frutescens and Kiggelaria africana, have been studied as sources of useful compounds. But most still need to be scientifically validated as treatments for particular diseases....
Depika Dwarka 25 Nov 2020
The interim results of an Africa-wide study of hospitalised Covid-19 patients shows that the continent is facing far higher mortality rates in intensive care units than other parts of the world, and that the higher death rates are best explained by scarce resources...
James Stent 20 Nov 2020
African countries need multi-sectoral approaches to tackle food insecurity...
Diabetes is a serious, chronic condition that affects the lives and well-being of individuals, families, and societies globally. It is characterised by excess levels of sugar in the blood...
Chinwe Juliana Iwu-Jaja, Andre Pascal Kengne & Charles Shey Wiysonge 13 Nov 2020
It has been nine months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of Covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a "public health emergency of international concern"...
Scott C Ratzan, Agnes Binagwaho, Heidi Larson, Jeffrey V Lazarus, Kenneth Rabin & Lawrence O Gostin 29 Oct 2020
Nigeria, like other African countries, wasn't spared from the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. To overcome this challenge, countries have been advised to keep testing, treating and isolating to reduce infections...
Christian Happi & Ifeyinwa Aniebo 28 Oct 2020
A team of researchers is trying to understand how the immune system responds to Covid-19 and whether it provides previously infected patients with a level of protection should they be re-exposed to the virus...
The pandemic has resulted in an overall drop in revenues for global laboratory and analytics businesses, although some segments in the sector reported a spike in demand...
Across the world, immunologists who retooled their labs to join the fight against SARS-CoV-2 are furiously trying to explain why some people get so sick while others recover unscathed...
Matthew Woodruff 26 Oct 2020
Most scientists agree that stringent control measures, involving efficient contact tracing, testing and isolation, together with social distancing and mask wearing, are required to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. South Korea, Taiwan, China and New Zealand have all successfully used these approaches to suppress the virus...
Kingston Mills 22 Oct 2020
Concern has been growing about safety issues related to hand sanitisers, and South Africa has been behind the curve in putting in place measures to ensure products are safe...
Lise Korsten 21 Oct 2020
Dried blood spot samples (DBS) is an accurate alternative to venous blood in detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests, a new study by immunology experts at the University of Birmingham has found.
If there was any doubt, the coronavirus pandemic has clearly revealed that we inhabit a world where people, animals and environments are interconnected and interdependent...
Dr Eunice Ubomba-Jaswa and Dr Nonhlanhla Kalebaila 23 Sep 2020
Based on official figures - which may be somewhat under reported - Covid-19 has not been as devastating in South Africa as initially feared...
Burtram C. Fielding 21 Sep 2020
Beyond Green's natural cleaning solutions San-A-Safe and San-A-Med are not only uncompromisingly dependable and safe, but also a formula that delivers the best in sanitation at a time when hygiene is key to reducing contact with Covid-19...
An 11-year-old entrepreneur from Paarl in the Western Cape now boasts with his own sketch on a hand sanitiser range following an earlier Food For Mzansi campaign to inform children about the Covid-19 pandemic...
Issued by YehBaby Digital 7 Sep 2020
By the first week of August 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic had caused about 654,000 deaths worldwide...
Christian Happi 7 Sep 2020