1 May 2020 – Confirmed Covid-19 infections in South Africa have risen to 5 647 in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced on Thursday. This is an increase of 297 on Wednesday’s figures.

No new fatalities were reported by the minister, so the official death toll remains at 103.
The total number of Covid-19 tests conducted to date is 207 530, of which 10 403 were done in the last  24 hours, Mkhize said. 
T he Western Cape remains the epicentre of the pandemic in South Africa. By Thursday the province had recorded a total of 4 6 deaths due to the coronavirus, Premier Alan Winde said.
In the last 24 hours, the Western Cape accounted for 30% of the Covid-19 tests in the country, despite having 10% of the population, having  conducted 12 510 tests in the past week.

BREAKDOWN OF CASES BY PROVINCE: 

Western Cape – 2 342

Gauteng – 1 446

KwaZulu-Natal – 980

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Eastern Cape – 647

Free State – 116

Limpopo – 32

North West – 31

Mpumalanga – 36

Northern Cape – 17Earlier on Thursday, Mkhize told a  virtual briefing of the World Health Organisation (WHO), focusing on the state of the spread of the coronavirus on the African continent, that  South Africa’s peak in infections was expected towards the end of winter, between July and September, when mortalities were also expected to rise.

“We keep improving our focus model as we improve the data coming from our test sites, so we will only be certain that any focus is correct when the numbers that we have fed in have actually been in place for a while and we observe the changing pattern of the epidemic,” Mkhize said.

“We actually believe that the numbers that are going to be coming in in the beginning of winter, when the co-infection with influenza viruses are going to give us a better sense whether we are going to look at a much more pessimistic scenario, where there will be a rapid rise in the numbers of people who are infected… or if it is going to be possible to manage it until September.”

(source: IOL)