As we count down the days until the end of the year, concerns over an increase in the number of new daily infections for COVID-19 in South Africa continue. This as the latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH) confirms that 4 173 new cases have been reported over the past 24 hours.

This marks the peak as far as new cases for a number of weeks now, with hotspots in the Eastern and Western Cape proving cause for concern currently.

The result is that the total number of infections for South Africa to date has now climbed to 796 472. The department also explained the reason as to why the usual total testing figures have been missing from recent reports, with audits occurring at centres and consequently impacting the accuracy of the numbers.

As such, we do not know precisely how many tests in total have been done in SA, but the figure is expected to be more than 5.46 million.

As for recoveries, these now stand at 734 305, translating to a recovery rate of 92.19 percent. Unfortunately, however, 65 new fatalities have also been reported over the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of deaths in the country related to COVID-19 to 21 709.

The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa, sans updated recoveries and active cases, is as follows:

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 Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash]