Inside Covid-19: SA’s plans to overcome R341bn pandemic bill; Exercise habits change in lockdown; Prof Veller. Ep 52

In Episode 52 of Inside Covid-19, you’ll notice a significant change as we’ve edited the interviews into highlights and with it shortened the length of the podcast. Interviews featured in this podcast are available in full separately via the Biznews.com website or App. In this episode, South Africa’s Supplementary Budget quantifies the cost to taxpayers of the pandemic at a net R341bn – we’ll examine the why, what and where to from here with contributions from finance minister Tito Mboweni; National Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane; and Stanlib chief economist Kevin Lings. Also in this episode, another kind of quantification, this time from Vitality’s wellness chief on how exercise habits have changed in lockdown, and we hear from the professor leading the local testing of Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine. – Alec Hogg

In today’s Covid-19 headlines:

  • South Africa’s finance minister Tito Mboweni disclosed in Parliament today that the country’s forecast tax revenue for the current fiscal year have been dropped by a quarter, or around R300bn, from R1.4trn to R1.1trn. This is a direct result of the economic sterilisation caused by the lockdown. A chunk of Covid-19’s immediate bill of R145bn is being financed through reallocation of departmental budgets, but there will still be a R43bn spending overrun for the Government’s financial year to end February. Mboweni says the result will be a budget deficit equivalent to 14.6% of GDP while debt will balloon from an expected high of 71% to almost 90% of GDP at its peak in 2023.
  • The rapidly spread of the virus in South Africa continues with a record 111 deaths on Tuesday, the first time daily mortalities have gone into triple digits. This was the ninth highest of any country on the day, the first time the country has featured in the global daily top ten. Total South African deaths to Covid-19 now stand at 2,102. Fresh confirmed cases in the country exceeded 4,000 for the fourth successive day, with Tuesday’s 4,500 new infections the sixth highest of any country on Tuesday behind Brazil, the US, India, Russia and Mexico. Global cases are continuing to grow with more than 100,000 mortalities now in Latin America with a further 1,364 on Tuesday taking Brazil to almost 53,000. Mexico, Peru, Chile and Ecuador are now all among the world’s 20 hardest hit countries in terms of total mortalities. A second wave is now firmly entrenched in the US with coronavirus numbers accelerating across the country reaching new daily highs in a number of states including Texas and Arizona. The surge in infections hit the US stock market which lost almost 3% on concerns that the promised economic and social revival may be further away than thought.
  • South Africa today kicked off the first human trial for the Covid-19 vaccination developed by Oxford University’s Jenner Institute which is also being trialled in the UK. Dean of Wits’ Faculty of Health Sciences, Prof Martin Veller told our Biznews colleague Linda van Tilburg the trials will take place in Covid-19 hotspots with healthy South Africans selected as volunteers.

Dr. Mosima Mabunda is the head of wellness at Vitality. It’s been an interesting time during lockdown given that many people are sitting at home. You’ve got the data. Are we all becoming couch potatoes or is there an uptick in the physical activity? 

It is an interesting time indeed. Since the government announced lockdown, we have definitely seen a decline in physical activity as we had expected. If you think about the implications of the lockdown, the gym’s closed, mass events were banned. The ways that people were used to being physically active were no longer there. I’ll give you just the high-level overview of the numbers that we’ve seen since lockdown. Pre the national state of emergency, when everyone knew about coronavirus, but we hadn’t realised the extent, we started seeing a decline of 12% in physical activity. As soon as the president declared a state of national emergency, we saw a further decline of 18% in physical activity. Since lockdown, because then the measures are put in place to limit options, that members had to be physically active we saw a further decline of 55%. So the changes have impacted how members were getting active.

Mosima, just unpack that for us. 55%, so was that during the time that we weren’t allowed out of our homes?

Absolutely, spot on. A combination of limited options and restricted movement has led to that. That is the earliest stats in March, you would remember where the mandate was, stay at home and do not get out, let alone exercise.

Did many people take up the opportunity of exercising online?

The beauty of the programme that we’ve have built and how we’ve entrenched physical activity is people wanted to exercise. You would have picked up the pressure in the media for the government to consider. What we did, which is a trend across the globe, is we provided virtual options for members to exercise. We launched a Vitality at Home, the name resonated with how members were engaging with our programme, which was a tailored programme to allow our members and the rest of South Africa to remain healthy and active while at home. One of the initiatives we launched with Vitality at Home is Johno’s eFitness Faculty, which is powered by Vitality. In there we want to help families stay active. You will see with Johno in that activity targets from children all the way through to adults because physical activity is important, cuts across all ages. What Johno does, is he has sessions throughout the day from the morning, and he’s got another one in the afternoon. We subsequently also added On-Demand videos where we partnered with Virgin Active to make exercise available online and the uptake there has also been phenomenal. Seeing that, I think a lot of businesses in the fitness industry innovated and allowed their trainers us to create Zoom’s sessions for their members to continue training. The examples on the uptake in virtual exercise options are just numerous. It is just a testament of how we’ve entrenched physical activity in people’s lives and people actually are realising that the connectivity is important for their health and well-being.

That’s interesting. I’m a member of a hot yoga club in Illovo and of course, with the studio closed, they also went online. It’s lovely that you can do your yoga session at home via Zoom. Have you seen an uptick from that amongst your members, that they’ve actually embraced this?

They have. We’ve definitely seen an uptick to a point where we’ve asked our partners to expand some of the physical activity options there up on the digital platform. In addition to the exercises that I mentioned, yoga was one. The Virgin Active app has yoga that is offered as well. What we did with Vitality at-home offerings, we had all the vitality pillars that I covered, in addition to physical activity, we had a mental wellbeing channel and a nutrition channel. Within mental wellbeing, we’ve seen an interest in some of the yoga and meditation videos that we’ve provided for our members.

Mental is a big issue here. Not always recognised, I suppose, because we can’t see when people are mentally ill. Have you seen any increase in that during the lockdown period?

What we have seen in the mental well-being assessments that we have launched, most of our members are scoring well, i.e. as low risk. What is interesting, though, is there is a decent uptick in calling SADAG as an intervention line. So for those people that see the need and that potential discord is potentially at risk, people are not shying away from actually contacting SADAG hard line to seek intervention.

I guess it’s we’re all in the same boat at the moment and it’s not seen as an unusual if you are feeling depressed or anxious.

No, it’s not. I think the common theme from all the experts that you engage with is that what we’re going through is extraordinary. And therefore, the feelings that we are feeling at this moment are very normal. And we must not be ashamed of that and we must rather embrace them and take action. Everyone is in the same boat. No one has ever been paid before. Therefore, it’s is rather important for people to acknowledge that what you’re going through it’s normal is part of grief and we need to allow that process to happen and tap into the interventions that are available to help us navigate this time that we’re going through.

You’ve got amazing data at Discovery and at Vitality. How have you seen the correlation or inverse correlation between people who are exercising and Covid-19 is affecting them?

We recently published the Risk Resilience Index, and in there what has become quite apparent is the protective effect of physical activity. We’ve seen definitely that for those members that are physically active, there is a reduction in Covid-19 related hospitalisation risk, a reduction of up to 11%. In essence, what one is seeing is potentially physical activity is able to offset some of the risks that are inherent in age and chronic diseases.

What about if you look at the different scales within the Vitality programme, for instance, those people haven’t really engaged against the diamond members. Is there any difference there, i.e Diamond members, I presume, would be much more physically active. That’s why they’re diamond members. Have they had less hospitalisation than the base group?

We still continue to slice and dice the status of the risk index is probably going to go live in the third quarter of this year, so we should have that granularity. From what you’re saying, we can infer because you get to Diamond by engaging in our programme. One of the key points in any activities is physical activity, I wouldn’t be surprised when ultimately the data does show that your diamond members ultimately would have a higher protective effect. They’re diamond because they’re active, be engaged, they’re healthier, and therefore they cost the scheme less. It would not be a surprising finding at all.

Are you seeing that many of your members are changing habits for the better, given the amount of information that’s going through now to say that the healthier you are or the fitter you are, the less chance you’ve got of actually succumbing to this awful virus?

What you’re seeing is those members with devices, the wearable risk trackers have managed to maintain being physically active. I guess for them, it talks to the fact that most of what they would be doing would be outdoors and they’re actually able to track. Which is why we’ve done a campaign to increase access to wearable devices because we see that those members of devices continue to sustain physical activity.

I was just wondering, the comrade’s had a virtual rest this year. What about your run series, the Vitality Run series? Have you looked into doing virtual races there to be part of what relaunched?

In giving our members opportunities to keep physically active, is exactly that, a virtual vitality run series. We did that before the Comrades and we recently did a virtual campaign where people run 5 km over five days. The take up for this event was phenomenal. In the latest event, we had over 7,000 entries. Members are asking for more. These are just some of the things that help them keep motivated as they exercise.

Do you think these things are going to stay? The virtual races and the changing towards accessing physical activities from home. 

If you look at the global trends, you will notice that there’s been a significant uptick in a hybrid model where we keep what we had, which is the physical bricks and mortar way of exercising and virtual options. Where people tap into App, Lifestream classes, etc. We think similar trends in South Africa as well. There’s definitely going to be a space where the spiritual options have a room in people’s lives. And what is beautiful about this is in addition to being a complementary offering, there are people who may not have been open to exercising at gyms, etc, who now can exercise in the comfort of their own home. I definitely see this staying and being a complementary part of how people exercise going forward.

So get yourself a device, a wearable, then start exercising at your convenience and your leisure. And you can get your points and hopefully stay away from the hospital.

Hopefully, stay away from hospital indeed.

Dr. Mosima Mabunda is the head of wellness at Vitality.

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