Durban - THE EXPECTED peak of Covid-19 infections in the country and KwaZulu-Natal is on its way as the number of positive cases jumped in a week from 7 786 last Sunday to 13 984 cases as of Saturday.
Fatalities reported in the province increased by 60 with 112 deaths last Sunday to 182 as of Saturday.
Premier Sihle Zikalala provided these figures on Sunday at his weekly Covid-19 media briefing.
Commenting on the infections, Zikalala said: “This represents the biggest jump to date, which once again bears testimony to the fact that we are well and truly on our way towards reaching our peak of Covid-19 in the province, and indeed in the country.”
In a presentation heavy on numbers and detail, Zikalala said 121 people had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, including 45 people on ventilators.
When it came to Covid-19 hot spots, eThekwini Metro still led the province with the most number of infections - 135 people infected, per 100000 people.
The second highest was uMgungundlovu District. “It had a drastic increase in incidence rate from 26 to 125 cases per 100000 population in 11 days (June 22-July 4).
In fact, recently, uMgungundlovu District has been reporting more cases than ILembe daily. UMkhanyakude is the only district with less than 10 cases per 100000 population provincially,” Zikalala said.
Women were the hardest hit group with 56% of positive cases.
Peaking of cases for women were between the ages of 25 to 49, while for men it was 25 to 39.
The number of people who recovered stood at 4197 or 33% of infections.
Zikalala said the reason for this number of recoveries was that people who tested positive took a long time to recover from the virus which could be weeks at a time.
He noted that schools opening up to various grades today came with various concerns.
Zikalala said many people in the province wanted schools to reopen in mid-August.
He said that was something they would be taking up with the Department of Basic Education.
Also present at the briefing, were the MECs from the departments of Health, Basic Education and Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs.
Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu said they were on track with deliveries of personal protective equipment (PPE) to various people around KZN and expected all of them to be delivered by today.
It was not all smooth sailing for them though, especially in uMlazi and Pinetown districts, where they had to contend with business forums that demanded contracts for making PPEs without going through the tender process. “They have been really disruptive. The situation came to a point where we asked police to intervene. Government will not be extorted,” Mshengu said.
He pointed out that the provision of water had not gone according plan because many municipalities were unable to deliver the water within the specified time frames.