Earlier today, Gauteng Premier David Makhura has announced that the third wave of COVID has hit the province, home to 15 million people.
The province had been recording over 1 000 positive cases for the past two days. In particular, there had been a spike in the number of new COVID cases over the last three weeksthe in the Vaal’s Emfuleni region.
“Having seen over 1000 cases a day we cannot afford to close down the provinces economy but definitely we want to see an increase in restrictions,” said Makhura. Businesses meanwhile had been warning of lockdowns ahead of a third wave.
He made the remarks during the official opening of a refurbished mining hospital in Carletonville, west of Johannesburg.
Test positivity rate had risen to 7.45% on Wednesday, the highest in five days and for a month the rate had hovered close to or above the 5% threshold of what is considered too high.
On Thursday, the health department reported that COVID cases had increased by 3 221 in the last 24 hours, further evidence that a third wave was imminent.
Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said in a statement that the national tally of confirmed cases to date now stood at 1 605 252, with 29 362 of these being active cases. Meanwhile, the recovery rate now stands at 94.7% after 1.52 million patients beat COVID.
Meanwhile, eight new cases of B.1.617.2, known as the Indian variant, have been detected in South Africa.
Professor Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the KZN Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, said that these were found in crew members of a commercial vessel that arrived in Durban Port from India.
De Oliveira tweeted: “The Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, confirmed detection of eight more genomes B.1.617.2 (Indian variant) and two community transmission of B.1.1.7 (UK variant) in South Africa.”
Source: IOL News
