Gauteng needs to publish district figures as Covid-19 cases shoot up

10 December 2020

The recent spike in Gauteng COVID -19 infections is of great concern and highlights the need for accurate figures and a district breakdown in order to track this epidemic.

Yesterday 1162 new infections were recorded in Gauteng, which is about triple the average number of daily infections last week.

People have the right to be informed about emerging hotspots, but the Gauteng Health Department has not published district and sub-district figures since 4 November.

A question mark also remains over the accuracy of Gauteng figures since it was claimed at one stage that there were fewer active infections than those in hospital with the disease. This prompted the National Health Department to request Gauteng to “harmonise” its data as the figures did not make sense.

There are currently 1349 COVID-19 patients in Gauteng hospitals which is much lower than the 7500 recorded at the peak of the epidemic in July this year, but the numbers can be expected to increase rapidly.

People need to take basic precautions over the festive season to slow down the resurgence of this epidemic as our hospitals will again come under severe strain.

Issued byJack Bloom,DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, 10 December 2020