In the last 24 hours, 18,762 new cases were reported, representing a 25.5 percent positivity test rate
A senior scientist said the delta variant has been a major contributor to the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. Addressing reporters here on Saturday, Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP), said the delta variant dominates the new infections recorded in the country, Xinhua news agency reported.
“This is the type that, initially, caused a massive epidemic in India and very rapidly increased in frequency and dominated the infections in South Africa,” he said. “In the more recent data that we did at KZN in community transmission, it perfectly captured that.”
Oliveira said the delta version was more permeable than the beta strain. “We are in the third wave. We are seeing the number rising again and again and the number of these infections continues to rise and Gauteng remains the epicenter of these new infections,” Acting Health Minister Mamamoloko Kubayi said at a press conference.
In the last 24 hours, 18,762 new cases were reported, representing a 25.5 percent positivity test rate. Out of this, 11,777 new cases have been reported in Gauteng. Kubayi believed it was now likely that the peak of the third wave would be overtaken by the second wave in January, when more than 21,000 new daily cases were reported.
“We are deeply concerned about the increasing incidence of hospitalizations, which is putting a lot of pressure on health facilities in Gauteng,” he said. South Africa has so far registered 1,913,861 Covid cases and 59,778 deaths.
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