Forbes Africa August 2020

SOME THINGS ARE SO OMINOUS YOU JUST NEED to pay more attention to them. My mind harks back to January when I met a family friend when on holiday in India and her two-year-old son kept wishing everyone: “Happy No Year!” And his mother gently chided his obvious mispronunciation of the word ‘new’, to the merriment of everyone in the room. Only if we knew! If forecasts are anything to go by, I can already see the likely headlines dominating December: ‘Zero Sum Year’ would possibly be one of them. There is no way you can say it lightly – the last seven months have inordinately changed the course of human history. And who knows what awaits us in the next five, and beyond into 2021? There is only one…

THE LAST FIVE MONTHS HAVE BEEN SHROUDED in morbid disbelief of what has happened to the world. The World Health Organization’s announcement on June 29 that the worst is yet to come, coincided with the global number of infections having gone past 10 million with almost 500,000 fatalities. It took three months to get to 2.5 million infections, an additional month to get to 5 million, 21 days for the next 2.5 million and finally 16 days for the last 2.5 million. There are a number of variables but it is conceivable that the world will have at least 5 million infections per week if a vaccine is not found fast enough. The other reality is that these are numbers based on what is being reported and the fact that…

As Americans celebrated Independence Day on July 4, rapper Kanye West took to Twitter to announce that he will be taking on Donald Trump for the United States presidency in November 2020. “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States! #2020VISION,” he announced. The newly-crowned billionaire, worth $1.3 billion according to Forbes, first brought his intention to run for president back in 2019 during the Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, saying he’d do so in the year 2024. Elon Musk, the South African-born CEO of SpaceX, endorsed West expressing his full support for the rapper. West was then heard to have dropped out of the presidential race after a political advisor believed…

As the global airline industry prepares for lift-off after lockdown restrictions around the world, aircraft manufacturer Boeing is currently evaluating promising research regarding ultraviolet (UV) disinfection of its planes. Applications such as UV wands and persistent UV could be used to safely and quickly clean high-touch surfaces in airplane interiors, said a report the Illinois-based The Boeing Company released in June titled, ‘Working together to ensure a confident global return to flight’. An emerging technology harnesses a section of the ultraviolet spectrum (222UV) that appears to be safer, faster and more effective at disinfection, it added.…

South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in collaboration with Oxford University and the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, has begun the continent’s first clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine. Leading the South African ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Vaccine VIDA-Trial is Shabir Madhi, Professor of Vaccinology at Wits University and Director of the South Africa Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit (VIDA). “This is a landmark moment for South Africa and Africa at this stage of the Covid-19 pandemic. As we enter winter in South Africa and pressure increases on public hospitals, now more than ever, we need a vaccine to prevent infection by Covid-19,” said Madhi at the launch in June. The participants, numbering around 2,000, will be followed for a whole year and the results…

Dexamethasone has been hailed as a breakthrough treatment in the fight against Covid-19. It has been found to be able to save the lives of Covid-19 patients, scientists at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom said in June. The World Health Organization welcomed the initial clinical trial results that showed the corticosteroid can be life-saving for patients who are critically ill with Covid-19. For patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth, according to preliminary findings shared with WHO. “This is the first treatment to be shown to reduce mortality in patients with Covid-19 requiring oxygen or ventilator support,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is great…