The latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH) on COVID-19 in South Africa features a highly concerning statistic. This as 457 new fatalities have been recorded over the past 24 hours, marking one of the highest daily death tolls since the country first went into lockdown at the end of March last year.
With the country staying at level 4 lockdown until 11th July, these latest numbers offer no cause for optimism over South Africa moving to a less restricted level of lockdown.
The newly recorded fatalities now pushes the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa to 62 628.
As for the other key figures in the report, 15 501 new cases have been reported over the past 24 hours, as the total number of infections recorded to date has reached 2 090 909. The recovery rate is currently 88.2 percent, while over 13.54 million tests have been conducted to date.
With the numbers for the spread of the virus looking worse with each passing day, it places greater importance on ramping up the vaccine rollout efforts, along with simply getting those already registered to take their jabs.
Given that the delta variant of the virus is of serious concern to the NDoH at the moment, it is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that has shown effectiveness against it, which places even greater need to get the country vaccinated as quickly as possible.
For now, 3 631 102 vaccines have been administered to date as of 17:00 on 6th July.
The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases | Recoveries | Active cases | Deaths |
Western Cape | 335 116 | 299 746 | 22 710 | 12 660 |
Eastern Cape | 210 440 | 193 738 | 4 718 | 11 984 |
Northern Cape | 60 454 | 54 167 | 4 863 | 1 424 |
Free State | 117 415 | 99 953 | 12 238 | 5 224 |
KwaZulu-Natal | 362 163 | 335 722 | 15 651 | 10 790 |
North West | 102 723 | 82 620 | 17 628 | 2 475 |
Mpumalanga | 100 368 | 91 694 | 7 139 | 1 535 |
Gauteng | 718 846 | 615 523 | 89 553 | 13 770 |
Limpopo | 83 384 | 71 875 | 8 743 | 2 766 |
Unknown | 0 | |||
TOTAL | 2 090 909 | 1 845 038 | 183 243 | 62 628 |
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 Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash]