This week will mark one of the country’s most important public holidays – Youth Day. While it past years it served as an opportunity to celebrate and reflect, this year it remains to be seen what will happen, namely as we continue to fight the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa.
On that front, it is a battle we are currently losing, as country is now in a third wave of infections, with provinces like Gauteng and the Free State hardest hit at the moment.
Looking at the latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH), 7 657 new cases have been recorded over the past 24 hours, which means we exit the past weekend with a total number of 1 747 082 infections recorded for SA to date.
The department also confirms that over 12.19 million tests have been conducted to date, with the recovery rate dropping again to 92 percent given the current surge, as 1 606 581 recoveries have been reported.
As for the second phase of the Sisonke Protocol vaccine rollout, movement remains slow, with a total of 1 773 417 vaccines administered to date. As always, it is important to note that 1 293 649 of these are the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, requiring a second dose to ensure proper inoculation. As such, the goal of vaccination five million people by the end of June is looking increasingly unlikely.
Added to this, unfortunately 59 new fatalities have been recorded over the past 24 hours, as the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa rises to 57 765.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 301 142 | 282 159 | 1 996 | 11 953 |
Eastern Cape | 200 042 | 186 774 | 210 | 11 699 |
Northern Cape | 54 650 | 45 325 | 3 554 | 1 251 |
Free State | 107 201 | 93 077 | 2 398 | 4 572 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 343 389 | 326 755 | 5 041 | 10 562 |
North West | 82 105 | 70 244 | 2 881 | 2 082 |
Mpumalanga | 85 774 | 82 037 | 991 | 1 474 |
Gauteng | 505 322 | 456 745 | 3 231 | 11 673 |
Limpopo | 67 457 | 63 465 | 295 | 2 499 |
Unknown | 0 | |||
TOTAL | 1 747 082 | 1 606 581 | 20 597 | 57 765 |
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 Frank Zhang on Unsplash]