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A Gauteng health department official collects samples from a man during a door-to-door COVID-19 coronavirus testing drive in Yeoville, Johannesburg, on April 3, 2020. (Marco Longari/AFP)

How to explain the Covid-19 ‘weekend effect’

Reported Covid-19 cases and the number of people tested typically fall over the weekend. But this doesn’t mean that the virus is taking a break

There is a sanitation crisis In numerous informal settlements around South Africa. Photo: Sewage waste. Delwyn Verasamy/M&G

Testing sewage: The Covid canary in our wastewater

Local scientists are using wastewater-based epidemiology to trace the SARS-CoV-2 virus in South Africa’s sewage system, which could act as an early warning system for outbreaks…

(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

Homecoming: Quarantine chronicles

Fourteen days of quarantine in a Centurion hotel may be tedious, but for Kate Bartlett, there are plenty of laughs with new friends

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde. (David Harrison/M&G)

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde tests positive for coronavirus

Alan Winde admits he is in a vulnerable group when it comes to contracting the virus, considering he is 55 years old, and a diabetic

(Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Eusebius McKaiser: A witness to Covid-19 stigma

Let us please not repeat the devastating Aids story where people died of shame rather than admit being infected by the virus

Screen test: The number of tests done is irrelevant if the results aren’t being processed quickly enough and no
one really knows how prepared they are until the wave hits, specialists have said. (Marco Longari/AFP)

SA accelerating towards virus peak without capacity, experts warn

Despite efforts to prepare for the worst, it is ‘very unlikely’ that hospitals will be able to cope with the onslaught of Covid-19 cases

As positive Covid-19 cases climb rapidly, health facilities will need more doctors and nurses. (Graphic: John McCann)

Call in the medics: Beds don’t cure people

As positive Covid-19 cases climb rapidly, health facilities will need more doctors and nurses

Nelson Mandela University.

Eastern Cape university goes all in to assist provincial health-care efforts

A special steering committee seeks to fill urgent gaps in the system in order to fight the coronavirus

Lockdown duties: A mixed patrol of South African National Defence Force and Gauteng traffic police set up a roadblock in Alexandra, Johannesburg. (Michele Spatari/AFP/Getty Images)

Our lockdown was different and coming out of it will feel strange

South Africa’s lockdown is not an ‘elimination lockdown’, nor a ‘flatten the curve lockdown’. Instead, our ‘delay lockdown’ has its own set of implications