QUESTION ONE IS BASED ON THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDY: A risk-based strategy for managing the COVID-19 epidemic.

There are no proven formula to balancing the effort to fight the Covid-19 pandemic with the simultaneous and equally important need to sustain livelihoods and keep open pathways to economic participation. Whereas these objectives are sometimes argued to be in opposition save lives versus save the economy crude distinctions are not helpful when facing the complex set of risks implied by the prospect of a protracted struggle to contain the epidemic.

In the absence of a cure or a vaccine, disease prevention approaches need to find ways to separate the infected from the uninfected members of the population. When interventions occur late, the intervention options narrow considerably to cruder forms of social separation, such as lockdowns. If caught early, however, mass testing coupled with rapid contact tracing offer surgical approaches to separating the infected from the uninfected.As a preventive strategy for COVID-19, according to emerging experience, mass testing and contact tracing should occur together with social distancing measures, border closures and the observance of health protocols (such as the requirement to wear masks when outside the home) where people cannot avoid some form of social contact. The distinction between the lockdown approach and mass testing and contract tracing is that the former shuts down a substantial part of the economy while the latter is compatible with continued economic activity.

This distinction is an important consideration where the direct effects of a lockdown disproportionately harm vulnerable workers and businesses. While Government can attempt to support the vulnerable, the extent to which this is possible depends on whether the institutional mechanisms exist to identify compromised individuals and businesses sufficiently for them to be supported. It also depends on the length of time for which support is required. The longer the period, the harder it is to keep businesses open, and the harder it is to raise the tax revenues and the debt required to finance support for vulnerable individuals. In the early phases of the COVID-19 outbreak, it is clear that Government lacked the capabilities to introduce the most effective strategy. The need for urgent action left no opportunity to scale up the measures required to prevent an exponential increase in infections. South Africa was just not geared for an epidemic of this nature. Consequently, the 21-day lockdown implemented on 27 March 2020 was appropriately timed and self-evidently essential.The extension of the lockdown for a further two weeks however raises important concerns. Two implications can be drawn. First, the extension suggests that the lockdown period has not been adequately exploited to ramp up the testing and contact-tracing regime. Second, it indicates that the narrow testing regime adopted to date (designed to merely identify imported infections rather than community-based outbreaks) cannot be relied upon to confirm whether the lockdown has succeeded outside of the affluent communities where the epidemic started.

While the two-week extension could be argued to provide some breathing space for the implementation of the preferred strategy of mass testing and contact tracing, any continued failure to put in place the required machinery will result in incremental extensions to the lockdown with all the economic and social consequences that will go with it.

An obvious further concern with this trajectory is the high likelihood that a successful lockdown within the South African context is essentially a leaky bucket. While it may prove effective in the more affluent suburbs, it may fail in the townships and informal settlements. The current lockdown may have therefore only reduced, but not prevented, the spread of the disease into the general population. Although these infection levels may be relatively low at present, it wont take long for them to become uncontrollable.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-20-toward-a-risk-based-strategy-for-managing- the-covid-19-epidemic-a-modelling-analysis/#gsc.tab=0

QUESTION ONE

1.1 With regards to the case study, discuss the following three (3) factors of Operational Risk Management: 1.1.1 People 1.1.2 Processes 1.1.3 Technology 1.2 Provide your opinion on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected operational risk management.