With the South Africa Weather Service confirming that the current heat wave being experienced by many provinces at the moment being set to continue for a couple more days, being cooped up inside during alert level 1 lockdown is less than ideal. This is especially so as the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa is still being fought.
The latest figures from the National Department of Health show that while the new daily infection has not peaked above the 2k mark for the past two weeks or so, it is still hovering in and around the same level.
To that end, 1 461 new cases have been reported over the past 24 hours, bringing the total for the country to date to 705 254.
As for recoveries, the NDoH os reporting that 635 237 have been recorded at the time of writing, translating to a recovery rate of 90 percent, where it has sat for some time now.
Following yesterday, where only two provinces reported their fatalities numbers, we had anticipated a spike in the number of new deaths related to COVID-19 today. That is not the case, however, the NDoH still regrettably reports that 61 new fatalities must be added to the total number of deaths, which now sits at 18 492.
Of the 61, the NDoH confirms that 21 are from the Eastern Cape, 19 from the Free State, three from Gauteng, one from Mpumalanga, six from the Northern Cape, eight from the Western Cape and three from KwaZulu-Natal.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 114 534 | 106 184 | 8 350 | 4 288 |
Eastern Cape | 92 122 | 86 927 | 5 195 | 3 451 |
Northern Cape | 20 381 | 16 933 | 2 859 | 254 |
Free State | 53 679 | 36 702 | 16 977 | 1 320 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 121 436 | 112 205 | 9 231 | 3 139 |
North West | 31 864 | 28 589 | 3 275 | 393 |
Mpumalanga | 28 830 | 27 534 | 1 296 | 591 |
Gauteng | 225 559 | 204 424 | 21 135 | 4 621 |
Limpopo | 16 849 | 15 759 | 1 090 | 435 |
Unknown | 0 | |||
TOTAL | 705 254 | 635 257 | 69 997 | 18 492 |
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 Kai Pilger on Unsplash]