What SA’s Covid-19 data tells us: Infectious disease number-crunchers Low, Geffen

One of the positive stories amid the Covid-19 doom-and-gloom is that South Africa appears to be bearing up pretty well, with just over two-dozen deaths by the end of the long weekend compared to the staggering 11,000 in the UK and some 114 000 worldwide since the start of the year. Of the 2m cases worldwide that had been logged on the Johns Hopkins University website by Monday 13 April, just over 2,000 were reported in South Africa. But there's good reason for the government to maintain the strict lockdown measures, with data specialists urging citizens to treat the numbers with caution. In this podcast with BizNews editor-in-chief Alec Hogg, GroundUp editor Nathan Geffen and Spotlight editor Marcus Low – who have both pursued PhD studies on infectious disease modelling – explore some of the key areas where the data might not be reflecting an accurate picture. Geffen and Low have produced an in-depth piece dissecting the numbers and making sense of statistical headlines for those of us who are less numerate and are trying to understand the reach of the deadly Covid-19 virus in South Africa. – Jackie Cameron

Welcome to Marcus Low and Nathan Geffen, who have written an extraordinarily good piece. I say this because I've been asking many people in our country in South Africa how it is that the South African infection rates of Covid-19 are so low? Up until this morning I never got a straight answer. Just a little bit of background, Marcus what is your interest in this field?

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