The latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH) on COVID-19 in South Africa makes for grim reading. This as 17 439 new cases have been recorded over the past 24 hours, along with 166 new fatalities. With the country in the midst of a third wave of infections, it looks like a harder lockdown is all but certain at this stage.
At the time of writing, however, we remain at alert level 3. That said, the adjustment in lockdown level has had little effect on the figures for the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa so far.
Looking at the other key statistics in the report, the total number of infections has now climbed to 1 861 065, with over 12.7 million tests having been conducted to date. The recovery rate has consequently dropped to 89.8 percent, with 1 671 391 recoveries reported so far.
As for the aforementioned new fatalities, the newly recorded numbers pushes the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa to 59 258.
Lastly, the vaccine rollout continues to move at a slow pace, with the five million vaccination goal set out by the NDoH far off target. Here, the latest report as of 23:59 on 22nd June says 2 312 873 vaccines have been administered to date, with 1 833 105 of these being the first dose of Pfizer vaccine and requiring a second dose before inoculation can be established.
The slow pace does not bode well for teachers, who began receiving vaccines yesterday. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has also been unrealistic with its vaccination targets and hopes to reach every teacher by the end of next week. Given how the rollout has gone so far, that does not seem feasible at this stage.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 311 648 | 286 783 | 12 717 | 12 148 |
| Eastern Cape | 203 709 | 188 430 | 3 484 | 11 795 |
| Northern Cape | 57 467 | 48 769 | 7 365 | 1 333 |
| Free State | 111 401 | 96 303 | 10 386 | 4 712 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 348 604 | 327 496 | 10 478 | 10 630 |
| North West | 88 833 | 75 632 | 10 993 | 2 208 |
| Mpumalanga | 90 094 | 84 514 | 4 082 | 1 498 |
| Gauteng | 578 488 | 498 488 | 67 618 | 12 382 |
| Limpopo | 70 821 | 64 976 | 3 293 | 2 552 |
| Unknown | 0 | |||
| TOTAL | 1 861 065 | 1 671 391 | 130 416 | 59 258 |
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 Mika Baumeister on Unsplash]
