Over the weekend, many people in the country had to deal with the prospect of loadshedding. Unfortunately it looks like it will be a fixture for the coming week as Eskom provided an update on the situation yesterday. There is also the prospect of COVID-19 in South Africa to worry about, with the National Department of Health (NDoH) issuing its latest statistics.
To that end this past Saturday and Sunday has seen 1 806 and 1 633 new infections being recorded respectively. This brings the total number of infections for the country to date to 638 517. Added to this is the reporting of a further 110 fatalities over the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s death toll for COVID-19 in South Africa to 14 889.
The NDoH explains that of the 110 newly recorded fatalities, 38 are in Mpumalanga, 31 in KwaZulu-Natal, 24 in Gauteng, nine in the Free State, seven in the Eastern Cape and one in the Western Cape.
While SA’s numbers continue to rise, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize is at least pleased to see that the country has fallen slightly in the rankings for infections, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“In the world ranking of a total number of cases per country, we have dropped from the fifth position to seventh position,” noted Mkhize.
As has been the case in recent months, the minister has also pointed to the rising recovery rate, which is now at 88 percent, as another reason for optimism in SA’s fight against COVID-19.
“The testing positivity rate continues to decline as well, now at 11% nationally on the 12th of July, corresponding more or less with the peak of our pandemic, we recorded the highest positivity rate at 30%,” he added.
The minister ended his comments on the latest update by noting that people should still be observing social distancing, despite the country being at lockdown level 2, highlighting the sharing of drinks and cigarettes in particular.
“We also caution against sharing of drinks, cigarettes, cigars, shisha pipes or ‘hubbly bubbly’ and so on. Be aware that if you do this you have directly put yourself at risk,” he concluded.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Province | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 107 187 | 99 097 | 8 090 | 3 961 |
| Eastern Cape | 86 849 | 82 233 | 4 616 | 2 986 |
| Northern Cape | 11 923 | 8 717 | 2 859 | 145 |
| Free State | 39 781 | 27 129 | 12 652 | 785 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 114 824 | 101 989 | 12 835 | 2 294 |
| North West | 26 245 | 21 033 | 5 212 | 275 |
| Mpumalanga | 25 076 | 23 610 | 1 466 | 416 |
| Gauteng | 212 898 | 187 301 | 25 597 | 3 813 |
| Limpopo | 13 734 | 12 782 | 952 | 214 |
| Unknown | 0 | |||
| TOTAL | 638 517 | 563 891 | 74 626 | 14 889 |
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 – United Nations COVID-19 Response on Unsplash]
