The country has begun another month under lockdown, this time with adjusted alert level 1 now in place. While this means an easing of restriction predictions of a fourth wave in November still mean the spectre of COVID-19 in South Africa looms large.

The latest report from the National Department of Health (NDoH) on the matter does give some cause for optimism, however, with 809 cases recorded over the past 24 hours. This may have something to do with reporting on the weekend, so we will need to see how the rest of the week pans out.

Either way, the total number of infections recorded to date now sits at 2 906 422. Added to this is 27 fatalities recorded in the past 24 hours, as the death toll related to COVID-19 in South Africa climbs to 87 780.

Looking at the other key figures in the report, the recovery rate has increased to 95.6 percent given the recent low figures, with more than 17.78 million tests having been conducted to date.

As for the vaccine rollout, last week President Cyril Ramaphosa announced initiatives to ramp up the administering of jabs in an effort to reach population immunity. These initiatives will see more sites open over weekends as the push begins.

For now it has not yielded the return, with only 52 556 jabs administered in the past 24 hours, but we’ll put that down to it being a Sunday. As of 17:00 on 3rd October, 17 875 187 vaccines have been administered in total.

The full outlook for COVID-19 in South Africa follows on below:

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 Andrew Valdivia on Unsplash]