As we reach the end of August, the past five months under lockdown has proved testing for the country and its citizens on several levels. Still the fight against the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa continues, and the latest figures from the National Department of Health (NDoH) show that infections have slowed, but still remain relatively high.
This as 2 585 new infections have been reported over the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total number of cases to date to 618 286. The NDoH continues to point the high number of recoveries as reason for hope too, with 531 338 recoveries recorded at the time of writing.
This translates to a recovery rate of 85.93 percent, and is indeed cause for optimism. That said the number of deaths related to COVID-19 in South Africa has climbed to 13 628, with 126 new fatalities reported over the past 24 hours.
At this time we do not know which provinces recorded the new fatalities, but the NDoH will likely share that information later today.
We do, however, have the number of cases, recoveries and fatalities featured in the table below.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Province | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 105 273 | 96 114 | 9 159 | 3 843 |
| Eastern Cape | 85 625 | 81 373 | 4 252 | 2 853 |
| Northern Cape | 9 829 | 6 640 | 2 859 | 120 |
| Free State | 36 419 | 22 829 | 13 590 | 567 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 111 585 | 94 680 | 16 905 | 2 102 |
| North West | 24 805 | 17 993 | 6 812 | 224 |
| Mpumalanga | 23 677 | 21 591 | 2 086 | 312 |
| Gauteng | 208 156 | 178 479 | 29 677 | 3 428 |
| Limpopo | 12 867 | 11 639 | 1 228 | 179 |
| Unknown | 50 | |||
| TOTAL | 618 286 | 531 338 | 86 948 | 13 628 |
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 engin akyurt on Unsplash]
