Wider input on Covid-19 is necessary, urges Academy of Sciences

Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, which is being used as an isolation site to treat Covid-19 patients. Picture: WERNER HILLS

The 45-member ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, which provides advice to health minister Zweli Mkhize, includes some of SA’s leading figures in public health, research, clinical medicine and laboratory testing. Mkhize is a member of the national coronavirus command council, which is driving SA’s response to the disease.

Medical Research Council president Glenda Gray and UCT's head of infectious diseases, Marc Mendelson, who chair the MAC’s subcommittees on research and clinicians respectively, are among the scientists questioning the wisdom of aspects of the lockdown. The health department has since acknowledged that the MAC was not consulted on how to ease the lockdown.

“Psychologists need to advise on the far-reaching mental health costs of the pandemic following extreme forms of isolation. Sociologists need to advise on the efficacy of social distancing in human settlements marked by inequality. Anthropologists need to advise on meaningful rituals of mourning when numbers are restricted for funeral attendance and family members cannot touch loved ones in their final moments,” it said. Economists should also be consulted, it added.

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