Health worker seen at the Nasrec Field Hospital for Covid-19, 25 January 2021. Picture: Michel Bega
As of Sunday, 5 December, the cumulative number of detected Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 3,031,694 with 11,125 new cases identified, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed.
This represents a 23.8% positivity rate.
One Covid-19 related deaths was reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 89,966.
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The total number of recoveries stood at 2,858,144 with a recovery rate of 94,3%. The country currently has 83,584 active cases.
19,761,834 tests in total have been conducted to date in both public and private sectors.
The total number of vaccines administered in the country so far stands at 26,348,830.
The majority of new Covid-19 cases are from Gauteng (7,929), followed by Western Cape (807) and KwaZulu-Natal (687).
North West (441) then follows, while Mpumalanga and Limpopo recorded 389 and 372 new cases respectively.
Free State recorded 259 cases followed by Eastern Cape (192) and Northern Cape (49) had the lowest cases for Sunday.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) to look at Omicron interventions as Covid-19 infections surge.
Ramaphosa is set to return from his West African tour on Wednesday.
Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, said the NCCC will convene an urgent sitting as soon as Ramaphosa lands on Wednesday.
The president and the NCCC’s priority would be to discuss the interventions required to combat the spread of the Omicron variant while keeping the economy afloat.
While government has to assure the safety of its citizens by doing what is necessary to curb the sudden infection surge, it also has to secure the livelihoods of South Africans.
As reported by City Press, Gungubele said the livelihoods is the biggest issue: “While we have to ensure that lives aren’t lost, our labour surveys haven’t been speaking a good language”.
Apart from cases in South Africa, Omicron has so far been detected in Belgium, Botswana, Israel, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Italy, Britain, and Germany.
Health experts say additional data is needed to understand the full impact of the Omicron variant, such as the severity, transmissibility and immune escape.
Omicron was identified by South African scientists and researchers on 24 November, with the first known confirmed infection from a specimen collected on 9 November.
South Africa reported its first cases of the Omicron variant, which has a high number of mutations, to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 25 November.
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