The number of confirmed listeriosis cases continues to rise, but at about half the rate than before the health department’s bombshell March 4 announcement that Tiger Brands’ Enterprise plant in Polokwane was the source of the outbreak.
The National Institute of Communicable Diseases’ (NICD) latest report on South Africa’s devastating listeriosis outbreak – the world’s worst on record – reveals that confirmed cases since last January now number 1,019, with 199 deaths.
One of the confirmed cases is that of 61-year-old Kogilan Naicker of Merebank, south of Durban, who spent three months in hospital before being transferred to a rehabilitation facility after contracting meningitis and listeriosis.
There were only eight new cases since the previous weekly report – one of them dating back to last October – compared with at least 30 at the height of the outbreak, the NICD pointed out.
