Extending lockdown won't stop transmission - only the economy will suffer more

Extended hard lockdowns in Africa are likely to have a more dire result due to a devastating economic environment that could see increased deaths from starvation.

Covid-19 infections rates have until now been relatively low on the African continent compared to the rest of the world, but the region has started to face economic impacts due to the lockdown restrictions being imposed on citizens.

I think we missed a few tricks. We did not do the maths during the lockdown; we kind of ramped it up towards the end of it. The idea of limiting community transmission which was what lockdown was meant to do, did not quite work out if you think of the number of cases that emerged over the last few weeks. The other thing we missed - tracking and tracing was not happening at the level it should have - and I think the big reason was essentially test results were coming back in a period of five to 14 days - enough time for people to go around and be contagious. It feels as if we did not do what we wanted to do, which was limit transmission, and that's still ongoing.

Danesh Ranchhod, Vice President - Franklin Templeton Investments

I don't think it will make much of a difference even if we kept lockdown going. In many ways we are limiting and hurting economically many people in the country. The risk is the longer we stay in lockdown - output on a permanent basis never comes back, jobs never come back.

Danesh Ranchhod, Vice President - Franklin Templeton Investments

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