There are currently about 3,300 reported cases of COVID-19 in the South Africa which is an increase of 142 cases since yesterday according to the country’s health minister Zweli Mkhize. The leading cities includes Gauteng with 1,170 cases then Western Cape with 940 cases and then KwaZulu-Natal with 639 cases.

This increase is closely linked up with the number of tests conducted with the number of tests carried out within the country increasing to 121,510 which is a daily increase of about 6,799.

According to the Health Minister, four new deaths linked with the disease were also recorded which increased the total number to 58. But with the new number of cases, there have been about 165 cases of recoveries which makes the entire number of recoveries 1,055.

The image below provides an overview of the coronavirus outbreak in South Africa as of 20 April.

Interesting trends

As of last week, there was an increase in the average number of coronavirus cases in South Africa which appeared to be similar to what was seen this week as well.

The number of increase was because of the number of tests being conducted daily in the country. The graph below indicates the average numbers of daily recorded cases of coronavirus over the period of 7 days.

According to the Health Department’s acting DG Anban Pillay who previously said that the number of tests being carried out aren’t enough to really detect the correct number of cases within the country.

Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, warned that unless testing is scaled up significantly the lockdown will be mostly wasted and with that said, Madhi suggested about 1% of the population which approximates to 600,000 people should at least be tested during this period of lockdown.

So with that, Madhi sets a target for the rest of the lockdown period that as high as 15,000 to 20,000 people should be tested everyday. The graph below shows the number of daily tests during the lockdown, and the 15,000 target set by Madhi.

The Coronavirus (SARS CoV-2) is a new strain of virus discovered in Wuhan, China and causes a respiratory disease called COVID-19 and has infected some 2.4million+ people worldwide with tens of thousands of deaths making it one of the worst health phenomenon to hit the world during this century causing numerous economies to shut down.