Reporting of weekly deaths resumes
Reports of the national numbers of deaths for South Africa for January and February 2023 are available.

Following an investigation into mortality trends, the predicted numbers of death have been revised for use in 2023. Briefly, the predicted numbers of weekly deaths for 2020 – 2023 have been estimated using new models based on data from the pre-COVID period 2015 – 2019 together with revised population estimates for 2020 – 2023 that take into account the effects of largely COVID-related excess mortality during the pandemic in determining the remaining population at risk. The overall impact of the revised estimates of predicted deaths is to reduce the estimate of excess deaths from natural causes for the period 2020 – 2022 by some 32,000 (less than 10% of the estimated total). About 40% of the difference were among children under 5-years of age and mostly during the latter half of 2021 and 2022.

It is planned that the monthly report will be expanded to include subnational estimates once we have improved the adjustment for under-reporting of deaths for these sub-groups.

In the context of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, it became essential to track the weekly number of deaths that occur in near to real time. Deaths recorded on the National Population Register are provided to the SAMRC on a weekly basis. These have been scaled up to estimate the actual number of deaths by accounting for the people who are not on the population register and the under-registration of deaths.