Last night, as many expected, President Cyril Ramaphosa held one of his now infamous family meetings where he addressed the nation on COVID-19 in South Africa and announced a move to alert level 2 lockdown.

The move has resulted in the curfew shifting to 23:00 in the evening until 4:00 in the morning, while gatherings still have many of the same restrictions in place.

While we await to see the impact of the move, we still have to contend with the spread of the virus, which has seen daily numbers decrease slightly over the past week.

To that end the past 24 hours has seen 3 961 cases recorded by the National Department of Health (NDoH), pushing the total number of infections reported to date to 2 858 195.

The NDoH also confirms that 126 fatalities have been recorded over the past 24 hours, as the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa climbs to 84 877.

Shifting to the vaccine rollout, the past week saw the turnout at sites increase, which is a positive should the NDoH’s aim of 40 million vaccinated people by December ever come to fruition.

As of 17:00 on 12th September, 14 690 586 people have received jabs, with an estimated 7 199 405 people inoculated at this stage.

The full breakdown of COVID-19 in South Africa is as follows:

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:

• 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 Markus Winkler on Unsplash]