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Western Cape reports a decline in COVID-19 cases

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The Western Cape Department of Health has reported a decline in COVID-19 cases. The Provincial Health Department briefed the legislature on the latest developments earlier on Wednesday.

The head of the Western Cape’s health department says the province is coming out of the second wave of COVID-19. Dr. Keith Cloete says it had a greater impact in comparison to the first wave.

But now he says hospitalisations, the use of oxygen, and reported deaths are showing a decline as the province comes out of the second wave.

Cloete says the province has a 44 % decrease in cases, 22 %  in admissions, and deaths declined by 31 %.

“We are at 10 378  as of yesterday, deaths, but the red line is 11 500 we got from home affairs, the NRC reporting officially is we are at 13 000 deaths so far and a gap from the first wave and a gap from the second wave.”

Cloete has however warned members of the public to continue to adhere to strict COVID-regulations.

“We are now in that in-between phase where we have heightened surveillance and vigilance. We urge everyone to adhere to protective behaviour to reduce new cases while we are on level one, especially this holiday period so that we avert an early onset of a third wave. We need to push this third wave back as far as we can. We have reflected on our experience of the first and second wave and we’ve learned, we know what we need to do in the coming months. We do require the whole of government, the whole of society to mitigate the third wave.”

Provincial Health Minister, Nomafrench Mbombo, raised concern about the status of the vaccinations; the most vulnerable older persons have not received the COVID- 19 vaccines. “We have got only the health care workers, not all of them. For us, the target is 133 000 for phase one but only 40 % could be vaccinated until we got other doses later. We are still likely to be exposed to infections,   hence we are worried about the long weekend in regard to the gatherings.”

Mbombo says they will not rest until everybody has been vaccinated.

Below are the latest coronavirus cases:

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