DURBAN - THE KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health is concerned about the negative Covid-19 milestones the province has reached in recent days.
That was according to department head Dr Sandile Tshabalala, who said numbers were increasing in KZN. Last week, the province registered more than 2 000 new Covid-19 cases on more than one occasion, with 2 667 on Thursday, 2 673 on Friday and 2 628 on Saturday.
The province recorded more than 2 000 new cases in five consecutive days and recorded more than 2 600 cases three times out of the five.
Since the start of the month, KZN has recorded more than 17 000 new Covid-19 cases and August 2 was the only day the province recorded fewer than 1 000 new cases, with 981.
“The eThekwini District bothers us a lot … In the 2 667, 1 280 are from eThekwini,” said Tshabalala. “But what’s bad is that the districts that are economic hubs of the province are where numbers increase a lot.”
He said when they checked the numbers of those who died from Covid-19-related complications, the province registered 72 on Thursday.
He said it did not mean that all those people died on Thursday, but that they were registered on Thursday as having had died from Covid-19-related complications.
On August 3, the province recorded a total of 400 046 Covid-19 cases.
“When you look at all Covid numbers, we have also reached 400 000 … that’s a very high number. Yes, we’re behind Gauteng, because it’s above 600 000, followed by the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and other provinces,” said Tshabalala.
He said people’s behaviour worried them and if people followed regulations and Covid-19 preventions, they could see a big difference.
Tshabalala added that they saw a problem in there being Covid-19 clusters in schools and prisons, which they were continuously trying to deal with.
However, in schools they found the department was not alerted to positive cases in schools, therefore they could not conduct contact tracing.
He added that the province has vaccinated more than 1.5 million people but they were unhappy at the figure because their aim was to reach herd immunity, 67%, by May next year, when they would have vaccinated more than 7.2 million people.”
Daily News