On Sunday evening President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation regarding the rollout of vaccines and COVID-19 in South Africa. He explained that more vaccine was being secured from Johnson & Johnson, as well as other sources, while also confirming that the country would be moving to alert level 1 lockdown today, easing some of the restrictions that have been in place for the past few weeks.

How this will impact the number of new daily infections remains to be seen, but the latest report from National Department of Health (NDoH) shows there is still plenty more to do be done. This as 1 168 new cases have been reported over the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections for the country to date to 1 513 393.

There have been over 9 million tests conducted to date, along with 1 430 259 recoveries also being recorded by the department, pushing the recovery rate up slightly to 94.5 percent. One of the other newly added metrics to the report sees 70 527 vaccines having been administered to date, with a further 80 000 from Johnson & Johnson landing in the country over the weekend, as frontline healthcare workers continue to be prioritised.

Unfortunately though, the report confirms that 52 new fatalities have been recorded too. The result sees the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa rise to 49 993.

The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa 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 marianne bos on Unsplash]