The Department of Health says the number of coronavirus cases in South Africa has increased by 297 to 5 647. This is an increase of 5.5%.
In a statement, the department says the number of fatalities from COVID -19 remains at 103.
The Western Cape has the most cases at 2 342 followed by Gauteng on 1 446.
More than 10 000 tests were conducted in the last 24 hour period.
Government has been ramping up testing at public labs in the last few weeks.
More than 207 000 tests have been conducted in the country.
10 403 of these cases were conducted in the last 24 hours.
As at today the total number of confirmed #COVID__19 cases are 5647 pic.twitter.com/6IMlhu2LnU
— Zweli Mkhize (@DrZweliMkhize) April 30, 2020
Coronavirus in Africa
Earlier, Minister Zweli Mkhize participated in a joint virtual briefing with the World Health Organisation and World Economic Forum on how the African continent is handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
He raised concerns around dealing with coronavirus with the challenge of comorbidities such as Tuberculosis, HIV, obesity and hypertension is the biggest challenge faced by government and health officials.
“A huge number of our people are having diabetes, hypertension, chest infections, TB, HIV and Aids and cancers. All of these need to be managed as well, whilst we are dealing with this. That is the reason why there has been an additional allocation of resources to actually help the department to get additional human resources, field hospitals so that we don’t actually have the COVID-19 patients displacing other patients who are quite needy. We are concerned about over 5 million people on antiretroviral treatment. They cannot get off that treatment. Their treatment programme cannot be undermined. That is going to create a new problem.”
Mkhize said Africa has a lot to learn about the virus.
Below is a graphic with the latest coronavirus statistics in SA:
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