The COVID-19 is spreading faster in south Africa than any other country.
The number of confirmed cases of the Covid-19 coronavirus in South Africa has surged to 119. This was confirmed by the Department of Health on Wednesday morning as 31 new cases were reported.
This comes just 10 hours since the department released a statement late on Tuesday night that the number of confirmed cases of the contagious virus had risen by 23 cases to 85.
Wednesday’s latest update represents a significant increase of 54 new cases since President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Sunday evening, when he declared several “state of disaster” measures to try to curtail the spread of the virus locally.
There have been no reported deaths or recoveries related to Covid-19 in SA, however the global death toll is set to top the 8 000 mark this week. The total number of people infected with the virus globally is also set to surpass the 200 000 mark.
In the statement released on Tuesday night by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, the department noted that 14 of the new confirmed cases were in Gauteng, five were in the Western Cape and four were in KwaZulu-Natal. Wednesday morning’s statement noted that there were 16 further cases in Gauteng, 10 in the Western Cape, three in KwaZulu-Natal and two in Mpumalanga.
The latest announcements reveals that Gauteng – SA’s economic hub and most populous province – is becoming the epicentre of the virus in the country.
Yet again, most of the new cases are related to people who have travelled overseas, largely to Europe and the US. However, the government’s travel ban on several European countries as well as the US, China, South Korea and Iran comes into effect as of today (Wednesday, March 18).
Covid-19, which was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation last week, has wreaked havoc on stock markets across the world with several nations, including China, Italy, Spain and France instituting lockdowns on public life in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.
The health minister said in his statement that it “is notable that there are six cases of local transmission”. However, there was some confusion as the original list of 23 new cases highlighted that eight individuals had “no known travel history”. This has since been corrected to say eight.
One of the eight is a two-year-old boy from the Western Cape, making him the youngest person to have contracted Covid-19 in SA. Three other children in the country, between the ages of three and five years, have contracted the virus (in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal).
“I must inform the public that there was a debate with clinicians, epidemiologists [and] virologists on when we, as a government, must release results to the public,” Mkhize noted in the statement.
“These experts raised an issue of an ethical obligation to immediately alert patients as soon as the results become available. This therefore means that by the time a confirmation test is conducted in public laboratories, patients would have been notified of their initial results,” he added.
“This clarification is important because as a government, we have announced to the public that all positive results will be verified through our public laboratories and the NICD,” he pointed out.
“In our efforts to ensure transparency, we have decided to release results as they are submitted by both public and private labs. In instances where our confirmation tests give contrary results, we will inform the public, make reference to that specific result previously announced, and give the outcome of the confirmation results,” Mkhize said.
“While we respect that private laboratories have the capacity to test and on their own issue results, our intention and approach is to ensure that there is credibility in the information and results given to the public,” he added.