We were among thousands of South Africans who listened attentively to the 2021 National Budget in the hope that our Minister of Finance would offer some insights into the future of healthcare provision. We fully expected the minister to explain how the roll out of the country’s National Health Insurance (NHI) programme would impact on the national budget in coming years. But he never mentioned healthcare funding at all, leaving it to commentators to go over the detailed statements released alongside his speech for further details. Our readers are interested in NHI because it will have a profound impact on the private healthcare sector and influence the long term sustainability of medical schemes and health insurance distribution.

A study of historic coronavirus outbreaks suggests that countries will experience a third wave of Covid-19 at some point in 2021. The three wave trend is prevalent in almost all previous pandemic events, including the 1929 Spanish flu, the 1958 Hong Kong flu and the 1969 Asian flu. More recently, MERS and SARS exhibited similar patterns, although infections in these cases were largely localised. Futurist and scenario planner, Graeme Codrington, says that South Africa will face a third wave around Easter 2021. He was presenting at a RGA webinar, titled ‘Back to the future: Emerging from the disruption’.