Facts in Q&A format

According to UCT’s Faculty of Health Science, there were 254 patients hospitalised with Covid-19 on 6 September 2021. ...

Clinical trials in Africa are notoriously low. The African Academy of Science estimates that only 2% of clinical trials conducted worldwide take place in Africa. South Africa became the first country on the continent to start a clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine. The candidate vaccine (Ox1Cov-1...

Temporary hair loss is normal after a fever or illness and fever is a common symptom of Covid-19. A few months after having a high fever or recovering from an illness, many people see noticeable hair loss. While many people think of this as hair loss, it’s actually hair shedding. The medical na...

Covid-19 spreads mainly from person to person through respiratory droplets. Respiratory droplets travel into the air when you cough, sneeze, talk, shout or sing. These droplets can then land in the mouths or noses of people who are near you or they may breathe these droplets in. Masks are a simple b...

As of February 2020, there were only 67 ICU ventilators and no non-invasive ventilation machines for a population of 30 million people in Ghana. This is equivalent to an estimated ventilator capacity of 0.22 ventilators per 100,000 people in Ghana. Even if operating room ventilators are used as a ba...

The Delta or B.1.617.2 variant of SARS CoV-2 (previously known as the “Indian variant”)was first detected in India in December 2020 and became the most commonly reported variant in the country from mid-April 2021. The mutations in the Delta variant’s spike protein help the virus to bette...

Although it is still too early to know, there is some evidence suggesting that the Delta variant reduces vaccine efficacy. Data from cases in England showed that the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines had been lowered after one dose from 51.1% to 33.5%. But after a second shot...

The WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) is a procedure for assessing unlicensed vaccines, therapeutics and in vitro diagnostics during public health emergencies with the ultimate goal of expediting the availability of these products to people who need them. The assessment weighs the threat posed by the ...

All available Covid-19 vaccines have been assessed for safety and have also been found not to interfere with the human Deoxyribonucleic (DNA) so it does not reduce a person’s life span. ...