Botswana has suffered one of the worst festive season Covid-19 super spreaders in the world – Sunday Standard investigations have revealed.
Batswana who are infected with the Covid-19 virus today are more than 400 times more likely to die from the disease compared to November last year before the Christmas festive season.
The latest records from the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre reveals that Botswana’s Covid 19 Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) has breached the 1% mark increasing by 400% from 0,3% on November 30th last year to 1.2% in March 2021, indicating the extent to which the Botswana virus has become deadly over the past three and a half months. 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 indices, 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.
Between November 2020 and March 2021, Botswana dropped 40 places among countries whose citizens are least likely to die from Covid-19. As at November 30th 2020 Botswana had the third lowest Covid-19 CFR in the world after Singapore at 0.05% and Qatar at 0.2%. Botswana shared the third position with the United Arab Emirates which also has a CFR of 0.3%.
Botswana had the lowest CFR in the region, followed by Namibia at 0,76 % then eSwatini at 1.8%.
Less than four months later, Botswana has dropped 40 positions to 43rd place among countries whose citizens are least likely to die from the corona virus.
Botswana has also lost the pride of in the region, falling behind Namibia and Mozambique both of which have a CFR of 1,1%.
Indications are that Botswana has recorded one of the highest CFR percentage increases in the world over the past three months.
January 2021 was hitherto the deadliest month since Botswana recorded its first case in March 2020. It was the month the country reached triple figures in the number of recorded COVID-19 deaths, with January 2021 alone accounting for at least 60 percent of all Botswana deaths.
As at January 18, the country’s Covid-19 death toll stood at 105, representing 60 more deaths than the 45 recorded on January 1st, 2021.
The Task Force attributed the alarming rise in cases to the festive holidays. Deputy Coordinator of the Task Force Professor Mosepele Mosepele demonstrated how the number of infections has risen with every national holiday starting from President Holidays in 2020, followed by Independence holiday, and the Christmas holidays.
December proved to be the super spreader, as indicated by the record-breaking numbers.
The rate of daily infections has been rising steadily since mid-2020, from 100 cases per day in July, September, October, rising to over 200 in November and December. The figures increased exponentially from January.
