COVID-19 WRAP | Covid-19: SA records 801 cases and 62 deaths in 24 hours

March 07 2022 -  20:23

Covid-19: SA records 801 cases and 62 deaths in 24 hours

SA recorded just 801 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Monday.

There were also 62 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours. Of these, six took place in the past 24 to 48 hours, with the rest as a result of an ongoing audit.

This means there have been 3,685,120 cases and 99,609 deaths recorded across SA to date.

March 07 2022 -  13:56

'It's time' — Bantu Holomisa says 'masks must fall'

As government deliberates on ending the national state of disaster, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa has called for the scrapping of compulsory face masks.

On Sunday, Holomisa tweeted a picture of him wearing a mask and wrote: “Masks must fall. It's time.”

March 07 2022 - 10:44

Covid-19 reality arrives for Kiwis as ‘fortress New Zealand’ falls

Two years after the pandemic began, New Zealanders are finally facing its reality. 

After keeping the virus at bay for so long, Covid-19 is now tearing through the nation’s population courtesy of the highly infectious omicron variant. In the space of two weeks, new case numbers exploded from less than 1,000 a day to more than 22,000. 

“Psychologically it’s quite a big shock because to date the pandemic has been largely something that’s happened to other people,” said Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago. “Until recently, the only people I knew who got infected with the virus lived overseas.”

New Zealand is one of the pandemic success stories. When Covid-19 first arrived, the government slammed the border shut, imposed one of the toughest lockdowns in the world and eradicated the virus from the community, allowing a quick return to normal. So far, the death toll is just 65.

March 07 2022 - 07:00

Has SA's Covid-19 infection rate decreased in line with government's expectations?

The Department of Health hoped that by the end of February the positivity rate of Covid-19 infections would be lower than 5%, saying it is its “greatest disappointment” that it is not.  

Health minister Joe Phaahla said the past two weeks have seen 12 districts across the country record spikes in Covid-19 infections compared to the previous two weeks. 

Phaahla was speaking during an online media briefing on the government's fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“Our major disappointment is that the number of infections is that they have not declined as steadily as we had wished for. We had hoped that by the time we reach the end of February, we would be at less than 5% positivity. Twelve of the 52 districts have seen spikes in infections which is leading to a plateau in the curve of infections instead of a complete flattening and decline,” said Phaahla. 

March 07 2022 - 06:12

Zero Covid-19 deaths in past 24 hours, perhaps due to reporting backlog

No Covid-19 deaths have been reported in SA in the past 24 to 48 hours.

But the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Sunday night that due to “the ongoing audit exercise by the national health department there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported”.

“Today, the department reports 0 deaths, as well as 0 deaths occurring in the past 24—48 hours. Total fatalities remain unchanged at 99,543 to date.”

According to the NICD, 1,147 new Covid-19 cases have been identified in SA, which represents a 6.1% positivity rate.

March 07 2022 - 06:00

Breakthrough: scientists find blood type may play role in severe Covid

A question that has dogged scientists since Covid-19 first struck has been this: why do some people become severely ill and others have no symptoms at all?

It was established early in the now-two-year-old pandemic that advanced age and certain comorbidities place some people at far higher risk than others when it comes to severe disease and death.

But that was only part of the picture.

Those two factors still didn’t explain why some perfectly healthy young people were getting very sick or dying, when other people with very similar health profiles, sometimes even in the same family, were whistling their way back to good health in just a few days.