South Africa

ADF STAFF Less than 60 days after it began, South Africa’s fifth wave of COVID-19 infections ended with the lowest peak and fewest deaths of any previous wave in the country. The fifth wave was driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of the…

This article is part of an ongoing series. For more debunked COVID-19 claims visit the first article in the series. ADF STAFF Social media can be an effective tool to spread accurate information about COVID-19 and help guard…

ADF STAFF New studies  suggest that bits of COVID-19 can linger in a patient’s gastrointestinal system for months after the person is infected. Ami Bhatt, an oncologist and geneticist at Stanford University in California, and Timon…

ADF STAFF As South Africa’s fifth wave of COVID-19 infections winds down, researchers have learned a key lesson from the experience: New sublineages of a variant can drive infections as much as entirely new variants can. South Africa’s…

ADF STAFF South Africa’s newest wave of COVID-19 infections is proving to be substantially different from previous waves. This is partly because of the high level of immunity in the population, according to experts from the country’s…

ADF STAFF Pregnant women are not more susceptible to catching COVID-19 than anyone else, but they are at greater risk of developing severe symptoms, especially in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy. In South Africa, that has translated…

ADF STAFF From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses have formed the foundation for the health systems across Africa — frequently putting their own lives on the line to treat community members infected by the coronavirus.…

ADF STAFF A large study of the omicron variant of COVID-19 has found that it is just as severe as other variants that came before, contradicting earlier research from South Africa and elsewhere that claimed omicron was more transmissible…

ADF STAFF Social media can be an effective tool to spread accurate information about COVID-19 and help guard against the pandemic’s spread. Its many platforms can also be used to disseminate false information about the disease, its…

ADF STAFF With new cases growing rapidly, rising hospitalizations and positivity rates above 30%, South Africa appears to be in an undeclared fifth wave of COVID-19 infections. The rise in cases is driven largely by the latest…