President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced the extension of South Africa’s adjusted level 3 lockdown, with some changes to the current restrictions. In a media briefing on Monday evening (11 January), the president said that the pandemic in South Africa is now at its most ‘devastating’, with the number of new cases, deaths and hospital admissions now at the highest point since the coronavirus was first detected in the country in March 2020. More than 1.2 million cases have been reported in the country to date, with over 33,000 deaths. Since the start of the New Year, 190,000 new cases have been reported, alongside 4,600 deaths. More than 15,000 South Africans are currently in hospital, with approximately a third of these patients on oxygen support. As a proportion of the population, the province with the highest average number of cases over the last seven days is KwaZulu-Natal, followed by Western Cape, Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Ramaphosa said that infections in Gauteng are growing exponentially, with this number set to rise as more holidaymakers return home from the coastal areas. This surge in increases is due to a new Covid-19 variant in the country which means that many more people have become infected in a far shorter space of time.
SOURCE: BUSINESS TECH