The number of new daily cases of Covid-19 in North West have decreased substantially, Health MEC Madoda Samabatha said.
He said there was still a need to continue adhering to preventative measures and to vaccinate in order to prevent possible resurgence.
“The province was declared to have been out of the devastating third wave last month. The third wave was severe in the sense that there was a significant increase in new daily Covid-19 cases in the province, the cases of hospitalisation also increased substantially,” he said.
He said during the third wave, hospitals like Klerksdorp-Tshepong, Wesvaal and Job Shimankana Tabane had to avail more bed space.
“Certain wards, which were used during the first wave but later closed after the situation, stabilised towards the end of last year had to be reactivated to create more bed space.”
He said during the height of the third wave the province had almost reached 2000 new daily cases while active cases had surpassed 9000 around mid June.
“However, at the beginning of the month of October, we had around 2800 active cases while new daily cases were 77. Since then, there has been a significant drop in both the active cases and the new daily cases. As of Monday 8 November, the active cases had further dropped to 747 while the new daily cases had dropped to seven.”
He said heading into the festive season, the public need to be cautioned of reckless behaviour that could set the province back.
“Though the province has improved from being among the bottom three to being in the top six, it is still concerning that the vaccination uptake is not picking up speed as expected. We have a target of 2.69 million people that we need to reach to achieve population immunity yet, we are still to reach half of this target since the start of the vaccination rollout programme. We need to continue to encourage people to vaccinate.”
IOL