Province sees consistent drop in all Covid-19 indicators

THE provincial Health Department is reporting an average of two daily deaths related to Covid-19, as the latest data continues to show a decline in all markers.

In the latest statement released on Friday, the Health Department said cases continued to decline to lowest levels between inter-wave periods, however, the emphasis remains on increasing the number of Covid-19 vaccinations.

The test proportion positive rate decreased to around 1.7% with new cases continuing to decrease by 5% week-on-week.

There has been a decrease in daily cases reported over the past week with 40 new cases reported daily, based on the seven-day moving average.

The province reported 702 active infections, 523 803 confirmed cases, with 502 917 recoveries as of Friday. Around 20 184 people have since succumbed to the virus.

Covid-19 hospital admissions are averaging at 14 admissions, daily. On average, two people die due to Covid19 each day, in the province.

“When compared with the interwave periods of October 2020 and April 2021, all metrics are now at lower levels than they have been previously,” said the department.

As of November 18, a total of 3 964 835 vaccines had been administered. The National Health Department has also extended the R100 grocery voucher to those aged 50 years and older going for their first dose.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases’ head in the Division of Public Health, Surveillance and Response, Dr Michelle Groome, said the NICD is seeing a small increase in the 7-day moving average for new cases and percent positivity in Gauteng over the past week, particularly in Tshwane.

“Localised increases in case numbers (clusters) are not unexpected. It is difficult to say at this stage if this is the start of a more widespread resurgence. Previous waves have been driven to a large extent by the emergence of new Sars-CoV-2 variants (Beta in the second wave and Delta in the third wave). Genomic sequencing in South Africa has not yet detected any new variants which are making up an increasing proportion of the sequences.”

At the moment, 41% of adults in South Africa have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 35% are fully vaccinated.