The sheer size of Gauteng’s population and the fact that the province is characterised by high-density living, with the largest number of informal settlements in the country by far, makes the province especially vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak, IRR analysts say.
According to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, of the 1 462 Covid-19 cases reported in South Africa thus far, the lion’s share (663) are in Gauteng.
Analysts point out that Gauteng has more resources at its disposal to fight Covid-19 than other provinces. Stats SA data shows that around 24% of the population in Gauteng has access to a medical aid scheme in comparison to a national average of 16.3%. According to the Health Professions Council of South Africa, Gauteng’s people-to-doctor ratio stood at 811 to 1 in comparison to 1 258 to 1 nationally. Data from Medpages indicate that more than a third (35.7%) of Intensive Care Unit departments in public hospitals are in Gauteng. Almost 40% of all medical laboratories in South Africa are based in Gauteng, along with most (54.9%) pharmaceutical companies in the country.
However, Gauteng is also the most densely populated province in the country. In 2019, it had a population density of 834,9 people per square km in comparison to just 48,1 nationally. New York City has recently been identified as the next global Covid-19 hotspot due to the city’s high density rate. However, New York neighbourhoods have more open space than the densely populated and crammed spaces of Gauteng’s informal settlements.
In 2018, Gauteng had 408 informal settlements in comparison to 256 in the Western Cape, 80 in KwaZulu-Natal, 180 in the Eastern Cape and just 14 in Mpumalanga. In the cramped conditions of informal settlements the risk of Covid-19 spreading like wildfire is high. In these areas, people are often forced to share severely limited resources, making social distancing harder to achieve.