Last night President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation with regard to COVID-19 in South Africa. Over the past 14 days, the country was under adjusted alert level 4 lockdown as we sought to fight the spread of the virus during the third wave. Unfortunately the higher level of lockdown did not have the desired result, prompting the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) to extend level 4 lockdown a further 14 days until 25th July.
Given the havoc that the delta variant of the virus has wrought up until now, it remains to be seen how the longer state of level 4 lockdown will impact the current rate of infections and deaths.
Looking at the latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH), 16 302 new cases have been recorded over the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections reported to date to 2 195 599. The recovery rate is currently 87.6 percent as over 13.91 million tests have been conducted so far.
As for the vaccine rollout, the figures as of 17:00 on 11th July, 4 236 718 vaccines have been administered to date. During his address, the president noted that more efforts have been made with the Sisonke Protocol and in the coming months more sources have been identified for vaccines to enter the country and ramp up the inoculation of citizens.
To date it has remained slow, so we hope headway is made.
Unfortunately, 151 new fatalities have been recorded over the past 24 hours, with the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa rising to 64 289.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
| Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
| Western Cape | 348 159 | 307 262 | 27 857 | 13 040 |
| Eastern Cape | 213 832 | 196 118 | 5 623 | 12 091 |
| Northern Cape | 61 806 | 55 236 | 5 121 | 1 449 |
| Free State | 120 073 | 102 540 | 12 116 | 5 417 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 370 496 | 337 743 | 21 876 | 10 877 |
| North West | 110 058 | 83 229 | 24 245 | 2 584 |
| Mpumalanga | 106 583 | 95 744 | 9 300 | 1 539 |
| Gauteng | 772 196 | 666 709 | 91 022 | 14 465 |
| Limpopo | 92 396 | 78 020 | 11 549 | 2 827 |
| Unknown | 0 | |||
| TOTAL | 2 195 599 | 1 922 601 | 208 709 | 64 289 |
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 Makarios Tang on Unsplash]
