Photo: Gauteng Health Department
Covid-19 latest: Medical scheme data shows death spike
‘If we look at national trends, new cases are increasing steeply in the third wave’ – Medscheme on its latest Covid-19 pandemic data
Photo: Gauteng Health Department
New Covid-19 infections are increasing steeply during the third wave and weekly hospital admissions have now exceeded the peak of the first of the pandemic.
This is according to the latest data on hospitalisation released by AfroCentric’s Medscheme, one of SA’s largest medical scheme administrators, and the administrators of schemes such as Bonitas, Fedhealth, POLMED, the SABC and Nedgroup Medical Aid. The medical scheme administrator said in a statement that it had been keeping a close eye on hospital admissions and released its latest data on Thursday.
“If we look at national trends, new cases are increasing steeply in the third wave. Wave 3 weekly admissions have now exceeded the peak of Wave 1,” Medscheme said.
According to Medscheme, as of Tuesday, 29 June 2021, cumulative Covid-19 admissions were up to 76 500, which represents an increase of 2 050 admissions since last Tuesday, while Covid-19 deaths in-hospital had climbed to 11 062, up from an 256 deaths since last Tuesday.
“Covid-19 positive admissions in Gauteng are still dominating the third wave. We have updated the Gauteng view of the Covid-19 admission trends and we can observe a visible change compared to last week noting that Wave 3 weekly admissions have now exceeded the peak of Wave 1. There appears to be a flattening in Week 26 for Gauteng in our data but this could just be due to reporting delays. The Level 4 lock down only commenced in Week 27 so will not have had an impact on the reported admissions,” Medscheme said.
However, Medscheme said that there were less deaths so far in proportion to admissions during the latest wave.
“There have been 968 deaths from 7 993 discharged hospital admissions under Wave 3 (12.1%). Currently there are less deaths as a proportion of admissions compared to Wave 1 and Wave 2, which is encouraging, but this could simply be due to reporting delays,” Medcheme said.
The administrator said that 63 479 beneficiaries of medical schemes in AfroCentric/Medscheme’s care had been vaccinated so far, based on claims data received from across all schemes received since Monday, 17 May.
“Further vaccine claims are still being refined, and we are working on incorporating additional data sources,” Medscheme said
