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Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, said the country was officially in the second wave of the Covid19 pandemic.
Addressing the nation on Tuesday night, Minister Mkhize said criteria had been formulated by scientists and modelling teams and he said: "as it stands as a country we now meet that criteria.”
Minister Mkhize said four provinces, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng Province were the key drivers of this new wave.
“The majority of new cases today (Weds) are from WC (30%), followed by EC (24%), then KZN which accounted for 23%; and GP accounted for 17%.”
Mkhize said the Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 1% of new cases respectively while Northern Cape accounted for less than 1%.
“It is important as well to highlight that today we have breached 6000 in terms of new cases and the total new cases today identified is 6 079 thus giving us a total of 828 598 cumulative cases today,” the Health Minister said.
Mkhize said of concern was that the positivity rate as of Wednesday was 18%, well above the ideal 10% that the MAC on COVID-19 recommends while the seven-day moving average graph indicated a rapid increase in KZN and Gauteng.
“This means that we should expect faster-rising numbers with a higher peak than in the first wave. In the last two days, the age distribution of new cases showed a different pattern from the norm. The peak age in this period is in the 15-19 age group,” Minister Mkhize said.
He said this was “believed to be due to a large number of parties involving young people drinking alcohol with no adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions” like wearing masks, social distancing and hand and surface sanitising.
Mkhize said this inevitably leads to super spreader events which spill over into the rest of the country as this age group is highly mobile and the majority of the carriers are asymptomatic.
“If this trajectory continues our health care system will be overwhelmed by the numbers. Hence, part of the recommendations that are being tabled by provinces themselves is that large gatherings and parties must be urgently curtailed.”
“We would like to indicate that, having observed the trends in the past couple of weeks, we had already sent a letter to all MEC’s urging them to prepare their respective provinces for a second wave,” the Minister said.
Meanwhile, Mkhize said that recommendations received by the Ministry would be discussed at the National Coronavirus Command Council and Cabinet before President Cyril Ramaphosa makes any further announcements.
