The National Department of Health (NDoH) has a new objective this week, as it looks to ramp up inoculations of frontline healthcare workers, as well as secure more vaccines for COVID-19 in South Africa. It appears to be struggling on both fronts, however, as the numbers for either metric do not look promising at this stage.
This as only 76 037 healthcare workers have been inoculated to date and no news has surfaced regarding a vaccine arrival in excess of the two 80 000-sized batches we’ve seen in recent weeks.
While the NDoH tries to sort those elements out, there is still the prospect of stopping the spread of COVID-19 in the country to contend with. Looking at the department’s latest report, 856 new cases have been reported over the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to date to 1 514 815.
Other figures from the report sees 1 433 320 recoveries being recorded, yielding a recovery rate of 94.6 percent. Unfortunately, 194 new fatalities have also been recorded, with the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa increasing to 50 271 as a result.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 277 845 | 260 715 | 17 130 | 11 200 |
Eastern Cape | 193 951 | 182 362 | 11 589 | 11 300 |
Northern Cape | 34 057 | 31 317 | 2 859 | 693 |
Free State | 80 174 | 70 644 | 9 530 | 3 279 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 329 421 | 310 275 | 19 146 | 9 690 |
North West | 61 070 | 57 450 | 3 620 | 1 203 |
Mpumalanga | 71 265 | 68 972 | 2 293 | 1 262 |
Gauteng | 405 035 | 392 367 | 12 668 | 9 740 |
Limpopo | 61 997 | 59 218 | 2 779 | 1 904 |
Unknown | 0 | |||
TOTAL | 1 514 815 | 1 433 320 | 81 495 | 50 271 |
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 John Cameron on Unsplash]