In recent days, the number of new infections for COVID-19 in South Africa has been on the decline, but that trend ended over the last 24 hours, following the latest figures released by the National Department of Health (NDoH).
To that end there have been 8 599 new cases recorded, which is almost double the 4 456 from the previous day. As such the NDoH’s hope that the country had a tighter grip on the spread of COVID-19 has faltered somewhat.
Precisely why there was another sharp climb after a few days of decline is unclear, but there is obviously more work to be done as far as controlling the spread of the coronavirus locally.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize’s comments earlier in the week confirm this.
“Whilst we are cautiously optimistic, it is still too early for us to make definite conclusions regarding the observed decline. We need to continue to track all these indicators and ensure that our testing capacity reflects a realist picture of our epidemiological status,” he explained following Tuesday’s statistics.
“We will therefore only know for sure when there is a consistent decline over a period,” he added.
With the newly confirmed infections, the country’s total now sits at 529 877. Also climbing is the number of deaths, which currently sit at 9 298. While this does make for dire reading, the only solace we can take at the moment is the relatively high recovery rate, with 377 266 recoveries reported to rate.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Province | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 98 031 | 83 528 | 14 503 | 3 279 |
Eastern Cape | 80 400 | 72 570 | 7 830 | 1 967 |
Northern Cape | 5 638 | 2 388 | 2 859 | 36 |
Free State | 25 232 | 10 582 | 14 650 | 327 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 87 798 | 51 857 | 35 941 | 1 038 |
North West | 20 686 | 9 243 | 11 443 | 109 |
Mpumalanga | 17 135 | 11 632 | 5 503 | 139 |
Gauteng | 185 282 | 129 375 | 55 907 | 2 313 |
Limpopo | 9 625 | 5 620 | 4 005 | 90 |
Unknown | 50 | |||
TOTAL | 529 877 | 376 795 | 153 082 | 9 298 |
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:
- Dr Zweli Mkhize on Twitter
- COVID-19 Connect on WhatsApp – add 0600 123 456 as a contact and say “Hi”.
- World Health Organisation
- SA Coronavirus website
- SA Government
- SA Presidency
[Image – Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash]