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A study on COVID-19 mortality in the second wave

A team of scientists at The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) released a *preprint of a paper on March 9th, 2021 entitled “Increased mortality among individuals hospitalised with COVID-19 during the second wave in South Africa.” When a second wave of infections swept across the globe, most countries reported a rise in cases, but

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Why Ebola is back in Guinea and why the response must be different this time

Efforts are underway to curb the outbreak. CELLOU BINANI/AFP via Getty Images Jacqueline Weyer, National Institute for Communicable Diseases New reports of Ebola in Guinea are causing anxiety given the history of the West Africa outbreak of 2014-2016. This was the largest Ebola outbreak reported to date – 28,000 cases were recorded, including 11,000 deaths.

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COVID-19 vaccine rollout for healthcare workers – FAQ

Disclaimer: Information courtesy of the National Department of Health (09 Feb 2021) WHEN WILL SOUTH AFRICA RECEIVE VACCINES?  South Africa received 1 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII) on 01 February 2021. New information that the AstraZeneca vaccine is less effective against the 501Y.V2 variant means that

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The NICD Conducts Healthcare Utilisation and COVID-19 Seroprevalence Survey

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), together with research partners Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU), Epicentre, and Genesis Analytics, are currently conducting a survey on Healthcare Utilisation and Seroprevalence of COVID-19 in three districts in South Africa, referred to as the HUTS survey. The NICD has been monitoring respiratory diseases, such as influenza and

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Dominance of the SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 lineage in Gauteng

The SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 lineage has been recently been shown to predominate in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa, all of which experienced major outbreaks of COVID-19. This variant of concern harbours mutations associated with increased transmissibility and neutralizing antibody resistance. In this report, we describe a preliminary analysis of 479 sequences

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