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Daily Covid-19 update: 459 hospital admissions reported in the past 24 hours
151 more Covid-19 related deaths were reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 64,289.
Health workers at the Nasrec Field Hospital for Covid-19, 25 January 2021, during the second wave. Picture: Michel Bega
As of Sunday, 11 July, the cumulative number of detected Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 2,195,599 with 16,302 new cases identified, the Department of Health confirmed.
This represented a 30.4% positivity rate.
151 more Covid-19 related deaths were reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 64,289. The total number of recoveries stood at 1,922,601 with a recovery rate of 87,6%.
The total number of vaccines administered in the country so far was 4,236,718.
A further 459 hospital admissions were reported in the past 24 hours.
Provincial breakdown
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), majority of new cases came from Gauteng (52%) followed by Western Cape (12%) then KwaZulu-Natal, which accounted for 9%.
Limpopo and Mpumalanga both accounted for 7%, while North West accounted for 6%, Eastern Cape accounted for 3%, Free State accounted for 2%, and Northern Cape accounted for 1% of Sunday’s new cases.
53,653 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. This brings the total number of tests that have been conducted to date in both public and private sectors to 13,901,847.
Global developments:
Euro final amid Delta surge sparks concern
British authorities are concerned about the risk of large gatherings at fan zones and pubs across England to watch the country’s first appearance in a major football final in more than half a century.
“London still remains in a public health crisis,” Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said Saturday, urging people to remain socially distanced.
London will host more than 60,000 fans on Sunday evening at Wembley Stadium when England and Italy clash for the coveted Euro 2020 title.
First death in Sydney outbreak
Australia announced its first coronavirus-related death in the current Sydney virus outbreak on Sunday, as the country’s biggest city struggles to bring the Delta variant under control.
The woman in her 90s died Saturday, hours after testing positive for Covid-19, and was also the first death from a locally-acquired infection in Australia this year.
Thai beauty pageant investigated after cluster
Thai beauty queens who took part in a pageant last month could face criminal charges for not wearing masks, police warned Sunday, after a cluster of 22 infections emerged from the event.
Thirteen contestants and nine others associated with the Miss Grand Samut Sakhon pageant, which was held at a Bangkok venue late June, have tested positive for the virus, officers said.
Thailand is grappling with a deadly third wave of infections with 9,539 new cases announced Saturday and 86 deaths.
90-year-old infected with two variants at once
A 90-year-old woman who died after falling ill with Covid-19 was infected with both the Alpha and Beta variants of the coronavirus at the same time, researchers in Belgium said Sunday, adding that the rare phenomenon may be underestimated.
The unvaccinated woman, who lived alone and received at-home nursing care, was admitted to the OLV Hospital in the Belgian city of Aalst after a spate of falls in March and tested positive for Covid-19 the same day.
While her oxygen levels were initially good, her condition deteriorated rapidly and she died five days later.
Variants weighing on economic recovery
G20 finance ministers meeting in Venice on Saturday warned the global economic recovery was threatened by the spread of new coronavirus variants and uneven vaccination campaigns.
“The recovery is characterised by great divergences across and within countries and remains exposed to downside risks, in particular the spread of new variants of the Covid-19 virus and different paces of vaccination,” they said.
Four million dead
The pandemic has killed at least 4,028,446 people since the virus first emerged in December 2019, according to an AFP compilation of official data.
The United States is the worst-affected country with 607,135 deaths from 33,847,784 cases, followed by Brazil with 532,893, India with 408,040, Mexico with 234,907 and Peru 194,249.
The World Health Organization says up to three times more people have died directly or indirectly due to the pandemic than official figures suggest.
