Johannesburg – The country recorded more than 100 Covid-19-related deaths for the second consecutive day, bringing the total number of deaths to 2 205, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Wednesday.
After recording 111 deaths yesterday, a further 103 Covid-19-related deaths were reported – 15 from the Eastern Cape, 25 from Gauteng and 63 from Western Cape, Mkhize said in a statement.
The cumulative number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is
111 796. The mortality rate is 2.0%, with the number of recoveries standing at 56 874, which translates to a recovery rate of 50.9%.
A total of 1 416 894 tests have been completed, of which 34 122 were new tests.
Data supplied by the Department of Health
In the next four weeks, the number of Covid-19 cases nationally is estimated to top 400 000 and 7 400 deaths could occur by mid-July, according to updated projections by the SA Covid-19 Modelling Consortium (SACMC), which was published by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Wednesday.
"The model projects that if testing patterns remain unchanged, there may be more than 408 000 detected cases by mid-July. However, prioritisation of testing may result in a reduction in detected cases to approximately 133 000," the report states
The latest model used data from laboratory-confirmed infections until June 5 and a detailed set of parameter estimates. The May projections estimated that there could be about 5 000 deaths by mid-July.
Meanwhile, Professor Wolfgang Preiser, the head of division of medical virology at the Department of Pathology at the University of Stellenbosch, believes the testing of people previously diagnosed for the coronavirus to ensure they are no longer infectious before returning to work is "nonsense and must stop".