Yesterday evening South African president Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation for the first time in 20 days. In his speech (in full here) he referenced mistakes that had been made and promised to do his best to rectify these. He also spoke about the need for transparency and he said government was committed “to continue to be forthright on the state of the pandemic. You want to know when things are bad, and be told when they could get worse,” he said.
While we acknowledge the work that has been done by the president and his government in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, there are areas which we feel need to be addressed. These are primarily data-access issues that we, and others, have been grappling with since the first case of coronavirus was detected in South Africa.
Continue reading “Data transparency is a crucial part of managing a pandemic, but we aren’t seeing that yet”