The month of September has gotten off to a less than ideal start for the country as stage 2 loadshedding persists today. As for COVID-19 in South Africa, it remains a concern with 628 269 cases reported to date, following 1 218 new infections being recorded over the past 24 hours.
Should Eskom’s loadshedding continue or intensify, it should prove interesting to see how it impacts the National Department of Health (NDoH) and its capacity for testing.
As has been the case ever since South Africa moved to level 3 lockdown a couple of months ago, the NDoH continues to highlight the strides being made as far as recoveries go. The latest statistics show that 549 993 recoveries have been reported to date, which translates to a recovery rate of 87.54 percent.
While that is indeed promising, 114 new fatalities have been recorded, which brings the total to date to 14 263 for COVID-19 in South Africa. As such, the true impact of this global pandemic has been significant.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Province | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 106 114 | 97 637 | 8 477 | 3 913 |
| Eastern Cape | 86 217 | 82 233 | 3 984 | 2 903 |
| Northern Cape | 10 837 | 7 175 | 2 859 | 129 |
| Free State | 38 125 | 24 464 | 13 661 | 716 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 113 237 | 100 384 | 12 853 | 2 152 |
| North West | 25 390 | 18 886 | 6 504 | 266 |
| Mpumalanga | 24 470 | 22 939 | 1 531 | 351 |
| Gauteng | 210 518 | 183 789 | 26 729 | 3 631 |
| Limpopo | 13 301 | 12 486 | 815 | 202 |
| Unknown | 50 | |||
| TOTAL | 628 259 | 549 993 | 78 266 | 14 263 |
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]
