South Africa’s Ministry of Health on Sunday announced the country has reported at least one million coronavirus cases since confirming its first case in March, reported Africa News.
“Today, we have breached one million cumulative cases of COVID-19 in South Africa, with a cumulative total of 1,004,413 cases reported,” the ministry said in a statement.
As of Sunday, South Africa has confirmed 1,004,413 Covid-19 infections and 26,735 deaths. The announcement came just days after a new faster-spreading coronavirus variant was confirmed to be discovered in the country.
The new 501.V2 coronavirus variant is believed to be driving the rapid increase in infection number. The virus strain was identified by a team of South African scientists in the Eastern Cape province and then rapidly spread to other parts of the country.
According to experts, the 501.V2 variant is more contagious and has quickly become dominant in many areas of the resurgence.
Several countries have canceled flights to South Africa and banned South African nationals since the new variant was announced.
South Africa has reported the most cases of COVID-19 in Africa, followed by Morocco and Egypt.
South Africa’s top government body monitoring the virus, the Coronavirus Command Council, had a meeting on Sunday to decide if the government needs to impose further measures such as a tighter lockdown or stricter rules on public movement to bring the situation under control.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to recall cabinet ministers from their holidays to hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday (29 December) to address the crisis.
Last week, health minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize had warned that lockdown restrictions would have to be reviewed to curb the alarming surge seen in the second wave of the virus.
“We must warn South Africans that we will need to review the current restrictions and consider further measures to ensure that we curb this alarming rate of spread,” he said.
