After around two years of hyper vigilance and restrictions, pandemic fatigue is beginning to set in. Globally, there are waves of protests against public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, including vaccination. At the same time, countries are easing restrictions or lifting them all together. Does this spell the end of the COVID-19 pandemic?
A team of UP scientists has published the only study from Africa that entailed genomic One Health investigations to reveal that Delta variants of COVID-19 were transmitted from humans to animals.
In February 2021, as the first COVID-19 vaccinations were rolled out to healthcare workers in South Africa, there was a renewed sense of hope in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. At the time there were concerns around vaccine procurement and inequity in vaccine distribution. But in the latter part of the year the major obstacle was a slow uptake of the vaccine among the South African public.
A scientist from the University of Pretoria (UP) has found that commercial, off-the-shelf hand sanitisers used by the public in Gauteng and Tshwane do not contain the recommended alcohol content, and are mostly incorrectly labelled according to local and international standards.
Since early in the COVID pandemic, the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2. This was a valuable tool to understand better how the virus spread. In late 2020, the network detected a new virus lineage, 501Y.V2, which later became known as the beta variant. Now a new SARS-CoV-2 variant has been identified – B.1.1.529. The World Health...
South Africa faces the challenge of promoting short-term economic recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, while ensuring long-term, environmentally sustainable prosperity. The research described here explores the tensions and opportunities presented by this challenge from two different modelling exercises. The results reveal that economic recovery, without strong green policies, will...
There are substantial sexual disparities between the outcome of COVID-19 disease in men and women. Numerous studies have confirmed that while there is no difference in the proportion of males and females with confirmed COVID-19, male patients have almost three times the odds of requiring admission for intensive treatment and higher odds of death compared to females.
Mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19 is higher in African countries than reported from studies done in Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
Along with Italian colleagues, Prof Robert Millar published a paper in the journal Neuroendocrinology about the differences between men and women in terms of COVID-19 outcomes, focusing on the role that sex hormones play on the severity and outcome of the infection and the complex interplay of sex with the ACE2 and TMPRSS2 enzymes, and inflammatory and immune systems.
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