South Africa's surge of virus cases expected to rise rapidly
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's current surge of COVID-19 cases is expected to dramatically increase in the coming weeks and press the country's hospitals to the limit, the health minister said Sunday night.
South Africa, a country of 57 million people, already has more than a third of the reported cases for all 54 countries in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people.
More than 4,300 people have been hospitalized out of South Africa's 138,000 confirmed cases, Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize said in a statement. He warned this number is expected to rise quickly.
“We are seeing a rapid rise in the cumulative number of positive COVID-19 cases indicating that, as we had expected, we are approaching a surge during the ... months of July and August,” Mkhize said in a statement.
“It is anticipated that while every province will unfortunately witness an increase in their numbers, areas where there is high economic activity will experience an exponential rise,” said Mkhize, saying that the cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban will see the biggest increases.
After two months of a strict lockdown, South Africa at the beginning of June began lifting restrictions to allow economic activity, as the shutdown had dramatically increased unemployment and hunger, in a country rated as the world's most unequal.
The current rise in infections has come from people who “moved back into the workplace. It was therefore inevitable that there would be cluster outbreaks as infections spilled over from communities into places of congregation such as mines, factories, taxis and buses,” Mkhize said.
Of the more than 4,300 people hospitalized for COVID-19, 80% are in general wards and about 15% of them are getting high flow oxygen treatment. About 11% of those hospitalized...
