GARDEN ROUTE | KAROO NEWS - Good news on the Covid front - we are nearing the end of the fourth wave. District Disaster Manager Gerhard Otto said in council on Tuesday 25 January that we're "almost there".
He said we could consider the Western Cape as "out of the fourth wave" when we reach a point of 600 or less active cases reported per day.
"We are around 800 now, we were around 1 000 last week, so we are nearly there," said Otto.
The total number of active cases decreased from 2 790 on Monday 17 January to 1 482 on Monday 24 January. All the local municipalities still show a decrease in the rate per 100 000.
Otto said the district rate is 239/100 000 compared with 451/100 000 on 17 January, but still higher than the provincial rate of 191/100 000. The district rate is no longer the highest of all the districts, but has dropped to the third highest position.
There has been a 49% decrease in new cases in the last seven days compared with the preceding seven days. The decrease is slightly more than the provincial decrease of 39%.
All the district hospitals are coping. George Hospital had 16 Covid patients in the general ward and one in critical care on Monday 24 January.
On the same day, nine Covid positive cases were admitted in district hospitals, compared with 31 a week ago. The nine patients are distributed as follows: Riversdale Hospital 2; Mossel Bay Hospital 1; Knysna Hospital 1 and Oudtshoorn Hospital 5.
Food for thought
"For some or other reason South Africans think all the other diseases are on holiday. More people are still dying of TB than any other disease in SA." – District Mayor Memory Booysen
"The flooding events of the last three months were classified by the National Disaster Management Centre as a national disaster. This will enable all accounting officers to re-direct their funds to deal with the effects of the occurrence as well to access to NDMC grants. Notable though is that NDMC grants are running low for 21/22, hence the need to focus on reprioritisation and redirection of own funds. The damage in George is over R300-million and in Oudtshoorn, over R26-million." – District Disaster Manager Gerhard Otto
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