Recovery and transforming the South African health system

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated lives and livelihoods globally and in South Africa (SA). The SA government has been lauded for its swift response to the pandemic, in March 2020 and subsequently. Many routinely provided health services were severely disrupted and there is an urgent need to recover to 2019 levels at least. In this paper, the lessons from the COVID-19 response are discussed and proposals for transformation of the SA health system are considered.