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COVID-19 in South Africa: 18th May

Before we begin we’d like to take a moment to explain what is happening here.

“Why is a technology news website covering COVID-19 news,” is a question we’re bound to receive so we’re going to address it right here.

Regulations published by Stella Ndabeni-Abraham states that “all internet sites operating within .zaDNA top level domain name must have a landing page with a visible link to www.sacoronavirus.co.za”.

As we fall under that regulation, we are required to link to the Department of Health’s website but we’re taking that a step further.

Every morning and every afternoon we will publish an update regarding COVID-19 in South Africa. For the purpose of these updates we will refer solely to the following sources of information:

We understand that folks are doing amazing things with data-viz and there are comments from experts that can help, but our goal with these updates is to provide you, our reader, with accurate information from trusted sources. If the source is not reliable, it will not be linked here.

We will also be placing a banner on our home page which you can click at any time to be directed to www.sacoronavirus.co.za.

Our latest update follows on below:

The past weekend proved a poor one in South Africa’s continued fight against the spread of COVID-19, with it seeing the highest spike in new cases since the virus was deemed a national disaster.

To that end the NDoH is reporting an increase of 1 160 new cases following the latest 24-hour cycle. This places the total number of confirmed positive cases in the country at 15 515 and death toll to 264, with three new fatalities over the aforementioned 24-hour cycle.

As has been the case in recent weeks, the Western Cape is the worst affected with it registering 9 294 cases at the time of writing. Gauteng is second amid the other eight provinces with 2 329, with the Eastern Cape third at 1 936.

With President Ramaphosa stating last week that he wishes to move parts of the country to lockdown alert level 3 at the end of May, it remains to be seen how this recent spike and overall rapid increase over the past couple of weeks will impact that decision.

Also worried about the Western Cape is Health Minister, Dr. Zweli Mkhize. “We remain concerned about the developments in the Western Cape, with the total cumulative cases now comprising almost 60% of the national cumulative cases and the new cases from Western Cape comprising 76% of the new cases from the past 24-hour cycle,” he said in a statement yesterday.

While the number of cases is increasing faster than normal, there is at least hope in the number of recoveries reported to date, with the NDoH stating that the number is sitting at 7 006.

As always, in order to stay up to date with the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa and abroad, we advise the following materials and platforms:

[Image – CC 0 Unsplash]

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