Today marks the penultimate day of July and while we would normally be looking forward to the prospect of a new month, the spectre of COVID-19 in South Africa looms large. This as both new infections and fatalities remain high after the country moved to a lower level of lockdown this week.
As such, the delta variant of the virus continues to wreck havoc on South Africa, placing an even greater importance on the vaccine rollout.
Looking at the latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH), 13 751 new cases have been recorded over the past 24 hours, as the total number of infections for SA climbs to 2 422 151. The recovery rate is now 90.6 percent, with 2 194 762 recoveries being reported and over 14.75 million tests being continued to date.
As for fatalities, a concerning 523 have been recorded, pushing the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa to 71 431.
Shifting to the vaccine rollout, the past 24 hours has seen 215 066 jabs being administered as government outlined a desire to ramp up the rollout by increasing activity over the weekends. For now, as of 17:00 on 29th July, 7 297 912 vaccines have been administered to date. This should hopefully pick up once the 18 to 34 age group is able to receive vaccines from 1st September onwards, but as it stands right now, there is no word on when registrations for the bracket will be allowed.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 393 643 | 346 097 | 32 635 | 14 911 |
| Eastern Cape | 226 621 | 207 258 | 6 608 | 12 755 |
| Northern Cape | 66 463 | 60 036 | 4 685 | 1 742 |
| Free State | 128 099 | 109 963 | 12 443 | 5 693 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 391 331 | 354 910 | 24 901 | 11 520 |
| North West | 126 630 | 98 837 | 24 780 | 3 013 |
| Mpumalanga | 123 175 | 113 478 | 8 013 | 1 684 |
| Gauteng | 855 814 | 804 357 | 34 696 | 16 761 |
| Limpopo | 110 375 | 99 826 | 7 197 | 3 352 |
| Unknown | 0 | |||
| TOTAL | 2 422 151 | 2 194 762 | 155 958 | 71 431 |
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 SIMRAN SRIVASTAVA on Unsplash]
