This week is proving to be a testing one for everybody in the country, as stage 2 loadshedding continues and the weather gets even colder. On top of this efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa also remains slow, with the National Department of Health (NDoH) still some distance off of its goal of vaccinating five million people by the end of June.
According to the department’s latest report, 1 117 569 vaccines have been administered to date. Crucially, however, 637 801 of these are the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, with a second dose required within six weeks of the first to ensure the inoculation effort is effective. As such, the over one million figure can prove a little confusing. Either way, efforts in vaccinating more people needs to be ramped up.
Looking at the other key figures in the report, 5 782 new cases have been recorded over the past 24 hours, marking the highest number in this metric this week. It sees the total number of infections recorded to date climb to 1 675 013, with over 11.71 million tests have been conducted so far. As for the recovery rate, it now sits at 93.5 percent, with 1 565 684 recoveries recorded at the time of writing.
Unfortunately, along with the number of new cases climbing, so has the number of new fatalities, with 110 reported by the NDoH. Once again, Gauteng accounts for the most of these new deaths at 54. This sees the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa increase to 56 711.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 294 568 | 278 897 | 1 996 | 11 823 |
| Eastern Cape | 198 082 | 185 484 | 210 | 11 664 |
| Northern Cape | 51 396 | 41 849 | 3 554 | 1 126 |
| Free State | 102 352 | 89 690 | 2 398 | 4 380 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 340 219 | 325 180 | 5 041 | 10 519 |
| North West | 76 905 | 68 715 | 2 881 | 1 945 |
| Mpumalanga | 82 980 | 79 784 | 991 | 1 456 |
| Gauteng | 462 903 | 433 776 | 3 231 | 11 322 |
| Limpopo | 65 608 | 62 309 | 295 | 2 472 |
| Unknown | 0 | 4 | ||
| TOTAL | 1 675 013 | 1 565 684 | 20 597 | 56 711 |
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]
