Research publications (COVID-19)

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Conceptualising COVID-19’s impacts on household food security
(Springer, 2020) Devereux, Stephen; Béné, Christophe; Hoddinott, John
COVID-19 undermines food security both directly, by disrupting food systems, and indirectly, through the impacts of lockdowns on household incomes and physical access to food. COVID-19 and responses to the pandemic could undermine food production, processing and marketing, but the most concerning impacts are on the demand-side – economic and physical access to food. This paper identifies three complementary frameworks that can contribute to understanding these effects, which are expected to persist into the post-pandemic phase, after lockdowns are lifted. FAO’s ‘four pillars’– availability, access, stability and utilisation – and the ‘food systems’ approach both provide holistic frameworks for analysing food security. Sen’s ‘entitlement’ approach is useful for disaggregating demand-side effects on household production-, labour-, trade- and transfer-based entitlements to food. Drawing on the strengths of each of these frameworks can enhance the understanding of the pandemic’s impacts on food security, while also pinpointing areas for governments and other actors to intervene in the food system, to protect the food security of households left vulnerable by COVID-19 and public responses.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) response in Zimbabwe: A call for urgent scale-up of testing to meet national capacity
(Oxford University Press, 2021) Dzinamarira, Tafadzwa; Mukwenha, Solomon; Eghtessad, Rouzeh
Control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) heavily relies on universal access to testing in order to identify who is infected; track them to make sure they do not spread the disease further; and trace those with whom they have been in contact. The recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Zimbabwe is an urgent national public health concern and requires coordinated efforts to scale up testing using the capacity already in existence in the country. There is a need for substantial decentralization of testing, investment in better working conditions for frontline health workers, and the implementation of measures to curb corruption within government structures.
COVID-19: An alternative approach to postgraduate supervision in the digital age
(2022) Hendrickse, Rozenda
Universities globally are facing enormous governmental pressure to increase postgraduate output, and in turn, contribute to the knowledge economy. This pressure is transferred to research supervisors, who have to navigate the complexities of research supervision to not only meet postgraduate output targets set by the university in particular, but postgraduate output targets set by government in general. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, research supervision mostly followed the traditional apprenticeship or group model approach to supervision, where engagement took the form of face-to-face interactions. With the COVID-19 pandemic came social distancing, which forced research supervision to move to online platforms. The core objective of this article was to peruse selected research supervision models or approaches to determine which model or approach would be most suited to an online supervision context, if any. This article advances a re-imagined view of research supervision in higher education. The author proposes an argument for an alternative approach to research supervision, most appropriate to the online supervision environment. The ontological stance, from the perspective of constructivism, underpinned the interrogation of selected research supervision models or approaches with the view to engender a different understanding of what the core components of a research supervision framework could be in the context of COVID-19, with due regard to the “pedagogy of supervision”. This article will be of value to emerging South African research supervisors and scholars in the higher education realm.
COVID-19: Focus on masks and respirators – Implications for oral health-care workers
(2020) Mulder, Riaan; Layloo, Nazreen; Mulder van Staden, Sune
The emergence of the novel human coronavirus (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; abbreviated as: SARS-CoV-2) generally known as COVID-19 is a global health concern.1 On 11 February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the novel viral pneumonia as “Corona Virus Disease” (COVID-19). The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) suggested this novel coronavirus be named “SARS-CoV-2” due to the phylogenetic and taxonomic analysis of this virus.2 Thus, both terms are utilised interchangeably in the literature. Undoubtedly, COVID-19 will change the way we practice dentistry with vast implications for Oral health-care workers (OHCW) and practice staff. Additionally, if rigorous safety protocols are not implemented based on a risk assessment outlined by the CDC, the dental practice can potentially become a nexus for disease transmission due to the high volume of aerosol production on a daily basis. Personal protective equipment (PPE), staff training and practice disinfection protocols have now especially become important in the light of the current pandemic. This is not a fight that one profession can fight alone, it requires joint efforts, it requires all stakeholders, it requires foresight and it requires us to put the health of the communities above all else.
The Negative Impacts of COVID-19 Containment Measures on South African Families - Overview and Recommendations
(2021-03) Adebiyi, Babatope O; Roman, Nicolette V; Chinyakata, Rachel; Balogun, Tolulope V.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported various pneumonia cases (‘Coronavirus Disease 2019’ [COVID-19]) on 31 December 2019 in Wuhan City, China, which has spread to many countries, including South Africa. In response to this, the President of South Africa declared a state of national disaster on 15th March 2020, followed by introducing various COVID-19 containment measures to minimize the spread of the virus. This paper examines the negative impacts that COVID-19 containment measures may have had on the family as a unit of society and furthermore provides recommendations to mitigate the impacts of these measures. It can be concluded that COVID-19 containment measures, specifically the lockdown restrictions, would yield both short-term and long-term impacts on proper family functioning. Several families in South Africa have been impacted financially due to the closure of business which led to the temporary/ permanent unemployment of some breadwinners in the families. This also has had a cascading impact on the food security of families and their ability to afford other basic necessities. Distress as a result of financial challenges or failure to provide for the family alongside spending much time locked down together as a family has also led to violence in the family. This was further exacerbated by the fact that the victims were stuck with the abusers and some could not report or find help due to the restricted movements. Furthermore, since most institutions predominantly moved learning online, results indicated that the lockdown restrictions affected the ability of some individuals especially those from poor families to access formal education during the period due to the lack of digital devices and internet facilities. In order to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 containment measures on the family, there is a need for collaborative efforts at intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community and policy levels using the ecological framework.
A new logistic growth model applied to COVID-19 fatality data
(Elsevier, 2021) Triambak, S; Mahapatra, D P; Mallick, N; Sahoo, R
follows a sub-exponential power-law scaling whenever effective control interventions are in place. Taking this into consideration, we present a new phenomenological logistic model that is well-suited for such power-law epidemic growth. Methods: We empirically develop the logistic growth model using simple scaling arguments, known boundary conditions and a comparison with available data from four countries, Belgium, China, Denmark and Germany, where (arguably) effective containment measures were put in place during the first wave of the pandemic. A non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm is used to map the parameter space and make optimal predictions. Results: Unlike other logistic growth models, our presented model is shown to consistently make accurate predictions of peak heights, peak locations and cumulative saturation values for incomplete epidemic growth curves. We further show that the power-law growth model also works reasonably well when containment and lock down strategies are not as stringent as they were during the first wave of infections in 2020. On the basis of this agreement, the model was used to forecast COVID-19 fatalities for the third wave in South Africa, which was in progress during the time of this work. Conclusion: We anticipate that our presented model will be useful for a similar forecasting of COVID-19 induced infections/deaths in other regions as well as other cases of infectious disease outbreaks, particularly when power-law scaling is observed.
Predictors of mask-wearing during the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from South Africa
(Oxford University Press, 2022) Burger, Ronelle; English, Rene; Maughan-Brown, Brendan; Christian, Carmen
Background: In the absence of a vaccine, the global spread of COVID-19 during 2020 has necessitated non-pharmaceutical interventions to curb the rise of cases. Purpose: The article uses the health belief model and a novel rapid mobile survey to examine correlates of reported mask-wearing as a nonpharmaceutical intervention in South Africa between May and August 2020. Methods: Two-way tabulations and multivariable analysis via logistic regression modeling describe correlations between reported mask-wearing and factors of interest among a sample of 7074 adults in a two-period national longitudinal survey, the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM). Results: In line with the health belief model, results showed that self-efficacy, the prevalence of others’ mask-wearing in the same district, and affluence were positively associated with reported mask-wearing. Those who reported staying at home were significantly less likely to report wearing a mask. There was little evidence that the expected severity of the disease if contracted, affects these decisions. Hypertension, obesity, or being overweight (measured three years earlier) did not have a significant association with maskwearing. The prevalence of mask-wearing increased significantly from May to August 2020 as COVID-19 cases increased and lockdown restrictions were eased. Contrary to the health belief model, we found that despite having a higher mortality risk, the elderly had significantly lower odds of mask-wearing. Conclusion: In South Africa, the mask-wearing adherence has increased rapidly. It is concerning that the elderly had lower odds of mask-wearing. This should be examined further in future research.
Understanding varying COVID-19 mortality rates reported in Africa compared to Europe, Americas and Asia
(Pub med, 2021-07) Okonji, Emeka Francis; Okonji, Osaretin Christabel; Mukumbang, Ferdinand C
The SARS-CoV-2 infection, which causes the COVID-19 disease, has impacted every nation on the globe, albeit disproportionately. African countries have seen lower infection and mortality rates than most countries in the Americas Europe and Asia. In this commentary, we explore some of the factors purported to be responsible for the low COVID-19 infection and case fatality rates in Africa: low testing rate, poor documentation of cause of death, younger age population, good vitamin D status as a result of exposure to sunlight, cross-immunity from other viruses including coronaviruses, and lessons learnt from other infectious diseases such as HIV and Ebola. With the advent of a new variant of COVID-19 and inadequate roll-out of vaccines, an innovative and efficient response is needed to ramp up testing, contact tracing and accurate reporting of infection rates and cause of death in order to mitigate the spread of the infection.

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