In a new video presented by Céline Tshika the slow response from provincial health departments and an already failing public healthcare system are highlighted as key factors that hampered South Africa’s ability to save lives.

“The local version of the epidemic has been extremely severe and a lot more people have died relative to many other settings with an equivalent population,” says health and social security systems specialist at Wits University, Prof Alex van den Heever. “So South Africa is one of the hardest hit countries.” 

Meanwhile, health workers’ experiences of working on the frontline are made real by testimony from Maverick Citizen journalist Estelle Ellis, who covered the pandemic in the Eastern Cape: “There were some people in the smaller hospitals who told me they would go off to hand over to night shift, and then when they came back for their morning shift, everybody in the ward they looked after was dead.” DM