Minerals Council South Africa health head Dr Thuthula Balfour on Thursday expressed deep sadness at the loss of 28 colleagues to Covid-19 and stated that research was being conducted to understand what made people particularly vulnerable to the pandemic and what could be done to prevent the deaths. “While the mortality rate in the mining industry is lower than the rest of the country, we recognise that we’re only seeing the initial impact of the pandemic in some regions and that it is likely that mining operations will be affected similarly to the regions in which we operate.