By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases said on Monday,Gauteng accounted for more than two-thirds of the 5,500 Covid-19 cases recorded across SA in the past 24 hours.
Latest figures show that there were 5,552 new infections recorded, with 3,720 of them (67%) being recorded in Gauteng. The province with the next-highest number of cases was the Western Cape with 446 cases, followed by the Northern Cape with 248 and KwaZulu-Natal with 247 cases.
The new infections mean that there have now been 1,752,630 cumulative cases recorded across SA since the outbreak of the virus last year.
The NICD also reported that there were 153 in-hospital deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities to 57,884. There were 936 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
A further 144 Covid-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 57,879, added NICD.
A total of 1,773,417 people had been vaccinated so far by the close of day on June 12.
Meanwhile the Gauteng government says that it will support the introduction of stronger lockdown restrictions this week as the province struggles with an influx of Covid-19 cases.
Gauteng premier David Makhura is now expected to raise the issue with the national government this week, with the country’s National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) expected to meet on Thursday (17 June).
The provincial government’s Thabo Masebe said that additional restrictions were especially necessary given the rising case of hospitalisations in Gauteng.
“We talk to the private hospitals almost on a daily basis, and they do indicate to us that they are running almost at about 80% of their capacity for ICU. In the public hospitals, we are also running at about 70%,” he said.
This echoes calls by acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane who said that her department will also make recommendations to the NCCC this week on further lockdown restrictions for South Africa.
The minister said that the department had seen clear behavioural changes when the country moved up a lockdown level in the past, and that this is likely to be the case again when it makes its recommendations to the NCCC later this week.
She said that the opposite is also true: when the country moves down lockdown level, and the mentality shifts to ‘Covid-19 is gone’ and compliance drops.
This issue has exacerbated by ‘fake news’, she said, with South Africans thinking they cannot be reinfected if they have already had Covid-19 or had a vaccine.
“The issue that worries us the most is the complacency amongst South Africans when they see the lockdown level dropping,” she said.