Covid-19 update: 1,291 new cases reported in South Africa

South Africa has identified 1,291 new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, has announced.

This brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3.733,919. This increase represents a 5.6% positivity rate.

24.094,335 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors. The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng Province (46%), followed by Western Cape (21%). KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 19%; Eastern Cape accounted for 6%; Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 2% respectively, and Northern Cape accounted for 1% of today’s new cases.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDoH reports 18 deaths, and of these, 2 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours,” said the NICD.

This brings the total fatalities to 100,116 to date.

There has been an increase of 43 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

Shanghai locals sleep at work and ration food as lockdown bites

By day it’s Romeo’s workplace, by night it’s his home. Like many other finance sector workers in Shanghai, he has moved into the office to keep the wheels of commerce turning during a harsh Covid-19 lockdown of the megacity.

Anticipating that creeping closures would catch him out, Romeo decamped to the Pudong district in Shanghai’s east in late March shortly before the city shut down.

The business hub has since become the epicentre of China’s biggest Covid-19 outbreak since the virus emerged more than two years ago, recording around 25,000 infections a day.

Most of Shanghai’s 25 million residents are under strict stay-at-home orders, raging at food shortages and fearful of testing positive for Covid as it would land them in a giant quarantine centre.

Some, like Romeo, are living strangely dislocated lives as businesses struggle to keep operating in one of the world’s major financial hubs.

“There are people sleeping on the first and second floors, each person goes to their own office,” Romeo told AFP, declining to use his real, Chinese name.

“There’s no forced conversation… everyone is quiet and respectful of each other’s distance and privacy.”

At night the social graces of office hours continue, he said.

For other workers in Shanghai, privacy is in short supply. Social media videos show staff sleeping on bunks in closed factories that are trying to continue manufacturing their goods.

Additional reporting by AFP