Last night President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation with regard to COVID-19 in South Africa, confirming that the current adjusted level 3 lockdown would remain in place.
For how long precisely is unclear, but given the recent spike in new daily infections, as well as more hotspots across the country cropping up, it looks to be a way of life South Africans will need to contend with for the foreseeable future.
Along with confirming an extension of the lockdown, the president also provided an update of sorts on South Africa’s efforts to secure vaccines. To that end, Ramaphosa said that government is actively working on getting 20 million vaccines for the country, with that figure deemed enough to create a herd immunity for the virus.
He also explained that the rollout of vaccines will happen in three phases, starting with frontline healthcare workers, then essential workers and finally the general population.
While this is good news, no dates or indeed confirmation that enough vaccines for the first phase of the rollout have been confirmed yet. As such, it is still a waiting game for many.
Looking at the latest figures on COVID-19 in South Africa from the National Department of Health (NDoH), the total number of infections recorded to date now sits at 1 246 643, with 973 265 recoveries also being recorded, leading to a recovery rate of 78.07 percent.
The NDoH also confirmed that 15 046 new daily infections have been reported, along with 416 fatalities, with the latter now pushing the total to date related to COVID-19 to 33 579.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 243 182 | 186 403 | 56 779 | 8 363 |
Eastern Cape | 181 532 | 166 092 | 15 440 | 8 902 |
Northern Cape | 27 973 | 23 756 | 2 859 | 445 |
Free State | 67 337 | 56 232 | 111 05 | 2 325 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 255 819 | 157 164 | 98 655 | 5 279 |
North West | 47 021 | 35 741 | 11 280 | 707 |
Mpumalanga | 46 830 | 38 240 | 8 590 | 711 |
Gauteng | 338 071 | 281 400 | 56 671 | 6 170 |
Limpopo | 38 878 | 28 237 | 10 641 | 677 |
Unknown | 0 | |||
TOTAL | 1 246 643 | 973 265 | 273 378 | 33 579 |
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 Daniel Schludi on Unsplash]