While Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize has to contend with allegations of impropriety over his Digital Vides connections, the rest of us are dealing with COVID-19 in South Africa. This as the temperature continues to drop and the threat of more loadshedding looms.

On top of this, the number of new daily infections has picked up in the last 24 hours, with the latest report sans infographic from the National Department of Health (NDoH) confirming that 4 623 infections have been recorded.

This therefore pushes the total number of cases recorded to date to 1 645 555. It has also resulted in the recovery rate dropping a decimal point to 94 percent, as 1 546 583 recoveries have been reported, along with more than 11.45 million tests have been conduced in the country so far.

As for the Sisonke Protocol vaccine rollout, a total of 761 903 vaccines have been administered by the department, with 282 135 of these being the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine under phase two of the programme. Whether the target of five million South Africans can be reached by the end of June, as Mkhize predicted at the beginning of last week, is looking increasingly unlikely.

Looking at the other key figure in the report, unfortunately 102 new fatalities have been recorded. Of the new 102, the North West and Gauteng account for the most at 45 and 24 respectively. This sees the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa rise to 56 077.

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 Maskmedicare Shop on Unsplash]