Batswana who are infected with the Covid-19 virus are among the least likely to die from the disease in the world.
Sunday Standard investigations have revealed that at the time of going to press, Botswana with a Covid 19 Case Fatality Ration (CFR) of 0,247% was only higher than Singapore which had the lowest CFR in the world at 0,1% as at May 2020. The CFR is an index used to measure the mortality risk of COVID-19 – the likelihood that someone who catches the disease will die from it.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) uses among other indicators, the CFR which is the proportion of individuals diagnosed with a disease who die from that disease and is therefore a measure of severity among detected cases. The CFR is the number of deaths from the disease divided by the number of confirmed cases and multiplied by 100.
According to independent calculation by the Sunday Standard, Botswana has the lowest CFR in the region, followed by Namibia at 0,76 % then eSwatini at 1.8%
Information gathered by the Sunday Standard further revealed that Singapore, Botswana, Hong Kong and Namibia are the only countries in the world with a CFR of less than 1 percent.
South Africa comes a distant fourth in the region at 1,96 %. This is in spite of the of the huge number of cases recorded by the southern neighbor. At the time of going to press South Africa had recorded 572 865 cases and 11 270 deaths.
It has further emerged that although Lesotho has the lowest number of recorded COVID-19 cases it has one of the highest CFRs in the region at 2,82 % which is worse than Zimbabwe’s 2,56 % and slightly better than Zambia at 2,83%. Malawi currently has the highest CFR in the region at 3,11%.
The figures and the graph below show that Southern Africa is doing better than the United States of America, Europe and some Asian countries on Case Fatality Ratios.
Information passed to the Sunday Standard suggests that this was the reason the Botswana COVID-19 Presidential Task Team recently clashed with the Ministry of Health over intellectual rights to Botswana’s COVID-19 knowledge.
The clash came after the Ministry of Healthentered into an agreement with the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct Covid-19 community testing in Botswana behind the back of the Covid-19 Task Team.
Under the agreement, BUMMHI a Botswana citizen led NGO which is an implementing partner of the United States Centers for Disease Control through which it provides PEPFAR-funded HIV care and treatment assistance to the ministry will be conducting the Covid-19 community testing in partnership with CDC.
It is understood that the Covid 19 Presidential Task Team was particularly unhappy with the terms of the agreement that gives the US government intellectual property rights over Botswana’s Covid-19 local knowledge. Under the agreement, the Presidential Task Team would be required to surrender to the American CDC all the Covid-19 local knowledge they have created. Professor Mosepele who has been a Harvard Lead Researcher understands the value of knowledge rights and is reported to be unhappy with the agreement.
In an interview with The Sunday Standard, The US Embassy Public Affairs Officer Ineke Margaret Stoneham stated that, “the United States has partnered with Botswana over the past two decades in its fight against HIV with more than $1 billion in assistance, and we recently provided $4.65 million to assist in the fight against COVID-19. Since the beginning, our assistance has been grounded in partnership with the Government of Botswana and in utmost transparency. In fact, our COVID-19 assistance was widely publicized in a press release in April 2020 and with a ceremony at the Office of the President in May. When we partner with the Government of Botswana on health system strengthening, we do so after intensive coordination with the appropriate government interlocutors. Our doctors and technical experts work side-by-side with those of the Government of Botswana every day. In these agreements, it is common practice to agree on data sharing so that scientists from both countries can further public health research. Our focus will remain on our joint efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Botswana, support those who may become infected, and contribute to supporting Botswana’s capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to public health threats.”
In its research earlier this year, the Clinical Excellence Research Center, Stanford University observed that, “there’s a mysterious pattern in the deadliness of COVID-19. Countries across the world, each with their unique healthcare system, combat the pandemic with varying containment and mitigation strategies, leading to drastically different mortality rates……. European countries have the highest infection and death rates, Asian countries remarkably lower ones, and Canada falls in between Asia and the U.S. What really explains these stark differences?”
The research report speculated that multiple factors could be at play: testing capacity, case definitions, age distribution, preparedness.
The report which was compiled in May just after Africa recorded its first cases concluded that, “We do not know for sure why some countries did so much better in confronting the current pandemic. Certainly, there are other factors that might explain the wide variability in death rates. But we do know that countries share the same goals to mitigate the pandemic and should not be islands attempting to confront the crisis independently.”
At the time, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa were projecting that Africa could become the next epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
Africa’s low COVID-19 CFR figures are however confounding researchers and scientists.
