SA drops to 18th in Covid-19 infections globally, despite entering second wave

As SA battles with a spike in the number of daily recorded Covid-19 cases, the country continues to drop on the list of countries with the most Covid-19 infections.

According to Worldometer, SA has dropped two spots to number 18 on the list.

Worldometer is a data source that tracks real-time statistics on several topics, including Covid-19. The numbers change daily as updates stream in.

In the world stats, SA was overtaken by Ukraine, which has more than 858,700 cases of Covid-19. However, Ukraine's death toll remains lower than SA's by 8,277.

To date, SA has 836,764 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 22,747 deaths.

According to the health ministry, there were 8,166 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours. This is an increase from less than 5,000 cases that were reported daily in the past few weeks.

Health minister Zweli Mkhize said out of 173 new Covid-19 related deaths reported in the past 24 hours, 90 were in the Eastern Cape, 52 were in the Western Cape, 13 in the Free State, 10 in KwaZulu-Natal and eight in Gauteng.

The recovery rate now stands at 90.4%, with 756,671 people in SA having recovered so far.

On Wednesday, Mkhize confirmed that the country was in a second wave of Covid-19 infections. He said the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng were the key drivers of this new wave.

Mkhize said the age group 15-19 years showed the highest number of cases over the past two days, a trend that is due to young people attending large gatherings with little-to-no social distancing and wearing of masks.

“This is a new issue and this is what is most worrying. It is believed to be due to a number of large parties with young people drinking alcohol with no adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions. We have had a report from KwaZulu-Natal where you could see this pattern is much more widespread than previously thought.

“If this trajectory continues, our health-care systems will be overwhelmed. Hence, part of the recommendations being tabled by provinces are now looking at how to contain these large gatherings and parties. The decision will be made by the NCCC.”