JOHANNESBURG (AP) – South Africa’s Covid-19 spike took the country to more than 1 million confirmed cases on Sunday, and President Cyril Ramaphosa called an emergency meeting of the National Coronavirus Command Council.
The country’s new form of coronavirus, 501.V2, is more contagious and has quickly become dominant in many areas of relapse, according to experts.
With signs that South African hospitals are reaching capacity and reaching a new high, Ramaphosa has announced the return of preventive measures designed to slow the spread of the disease.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. “We are not helpless against this kind of face,” Richard Lesles told the Associated Press. “We can change our behavior to give the virus less chances to spread.” He said that inside the house, it is most important to avoid contact with other people in closed spaces.
South Africa announced a total of 1,004,431 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday evening. Of that number, 26,735 die in a country of 60 million people.
“One million cases is a serious target, but the true number of cases and deaths is almost certainly much higher,” Lesells said.
“We’ve seen the new variant spread rapidly,” he said, adding that genomic sequencing shows that it has become dominant in the western Cape, the Eastern Cape and the coastal provinces of KwaZulu-Natal. It is not yet certain whether the diverse inland Gauteng province is as influential as Johannesburg and the country’s most populous province.
“As people return from holidays in coastal areas, we can expect to diversify with them,” Lesells said. “We can also expect passengers to travel with them across the border to other African countries.
Experts say that due to the mutation of the Covid-1 virus, it binds the cells in our body more effectively.
Vaccines have not yet reached South Africa, although Ramaphosa has said he expects 10% of the country’s 60 million people to be inoculated in the first month of 2021.
South Africa’s daily seven-day rolling average of new cases has nearly doubled in the past two weeks. As of December 12, there were 10.24 new cases per 100,000 people. New cases in 100,000 people on 26 December. The death toll has also almost doubled. With a seven-day rolling average, South Africa has seen 0.25 deaths per 100,000 people in the last two weeks on December 12, compared to 0.48 deaths per 100,000 people on December 26.
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