Thank you very much. I am sorry about the earlier miscommunication. I was not aware that it was my turn, but I also had my side muted so I did not hear because there was some breakthrough noise. The question from hon Gwarube is about modelling. She is asking that through models what we expect the peak of COVID-19 infections will and what would be the death rate at that time. The response is as follows.
There are several modeling groups that have released their estimates publicly. There are three types of estimates that are currently being modeled: first, projections, which estimate the number of new infections and deaths as well as resources that will be required for the response; second, interventions, if fully implemented that can flatten the curves; and third, spatial and motility models, these are models that can be used to identify hotspots. The estimates provided by these models are influenced by the assumptions used by the different models. The model presented in a recent virtual symposium which we hosted as the department, included projection models from the SA COVID-19 Modeling Consortium which is composed of modelers from National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Modeling and Simulation Hub Africa Unit at the University of Cape Town, Centre for Excellence and Epidemiolocal Modeling and Analysis at the Stellenbosch University, and the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office at Wits University. There was another one from Deloitte on behalf of Business for South Africa and the Actuarial Society of South Africa.
According to the SA COVID-19 Modeling Consortium the peak of infections is expected in mid-July in what is called the pessimistic scenario and mid- August in the optimistic scenario. This model estimates that provinces will peak at different times. The Actuarial Society of South Africa's, Assa, model predicts that the peak will be full in August. These models should be considered dynamic and are dependent on the data available and as new data such as hospitalisations become available new estimates will be released by the modelers. As the outputs of these models are not cast in stone they should only be used as a guide of what may be possible so that we plan and take all those into account.
The different models that have been made public have different death rates at the peak. The SA COVID-19 Modeling Consortium estimated the number of deaths under the two scenarios to ranges between 34 000 and 50 000. The Actuarial Society of South Africa estimates it to be 48 000. The other one by Deloitte estimates up to 41 000 deaths by December. All of these figures have also been challenged by other academics. At the moment they are good just to keep note of them, but they are actually open for debates amongst those who are specialists in this area. We can only just indicate we look at them so that we have a sense of what is happening. Not necessarily all what is coming from models is actually taken into account. In our situation we just take those aspects that we believe may well be important. We keep watching. We do believe that the models will improve as time goes on and as more information and raw data from South Africa is fed into their assumptions. Thank you very much.