The Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize, has warned the residents of the Western Cape – and the country – to not become lax in their social distancing efforts. According to the Minister, there has been a 42% increase in new COVID-19 cases in the Cape.
“The province recorded a 42% increase in new infections. According to our resurgence plan, we define this significant spike in new cases in the Western Cape as a resurgence,” he said via Twitter. “The Western Cape Provincial Health Department has identified specific clusters that are responsible for the increase in cases, and has advised that each of these clusters has been investigated and a detailed outbreak response is being mounted. We have noted that the single biggest cluster outbreak has been identified to be in the Southern Sub-district in the Cape Metro, and this has been associated with a super-spreader event in a bar.”
“We await further reports from the WC Health response teams who are now required to target the sub-districts with a high increase of new cases over the last two weeks,” Mkhize said.
The Department of Health’s epidemiological reports also shows that in the country, over the last seven days there has been an increase of 9.1% in new cases. Similarly, over the last 14 days, there has been an increase of 10.7%.
“We are now encouraging all provinces to pay attention to these increasing numbers and quickly mount a response, including contact tracing and quarantine,” Mkhize said. “We must mention that the rate of new infections and deaths will inform the recommendations that the Health Department makes to the National Coronavirus Council.”
According to the Minister, South Africans must continue to adhere to social distancing and health protocols.
“All of us must take this responsibility and always encourage those around us,” he said. “We must also take heed of the major lessons from the COVID-19 that is despite the anxiety, the psychological trauma, the physical suffering and grief from lives we lost, COVID-19 has reawakened our deep values of Ubuntu in us all.”
