{"id":397901,"date":"2020-05-14T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=397901"},"modified":"2020-05-14T10:00:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T08:00:11","slug":"the-western-cape-now-accounts-for-more-than-half-of-south-africas-coronavirus-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/397901\/the-western-cape-now-accounts-for-more-than-half-of-south-africas-coronavirus-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"The Western Cape now accounts for more than half of South Africa’s coronavirus cases"},"content":{"rendered":"

The coronavirus outbreak in South Africa has hit hardest in the Western Cape, home to the city of Cape Town.<\/p>\n

The province now has more than half of the 12,074 confirmed cases nationwide and in recent days contributed about 90% of new infections recorded by the Health Ministry.<\/p>\n

Contrary to initial projections, infections and deaths have increased at a much slower rate in the economic hub of Johannesburg in Gauteng province.<\/p>\n

The Western Cape and Gauteng together account for about 37% of South Africa\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

The Western Cape has registered 117 virus-related deaths out of 219 nationwide, and Gauteng 24. Most of the infections and deaths have been in Cape Town, one of the world\u2019s most popular tourist destinations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While Western Cape authorities attribute the surge in cases to \u201ca rigorous approach to testing,\u201d the province is facing clusters of infections in households, work places and supermarkets.<\/p>\n

That explains why the area also has a higher number of people who test positive — between 7% to 9%, compared to a national average of between 2% to 3%, according to Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician with the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu Natal.<\/p>\n

\u201cLocalized outbreaks are common,\u201d De Oliveira said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it in nursing homes in the U.K. and recently in nightclubs in South Korea.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the normal biology of the virus and it\u2019s happening at a higher frequency in the Western Cape.\u201d The rest of the country is unlikely to be spared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may eventually see this in other parts of the country,\u201d he said. \u201cThe question isn\u2019t why it hasn\u2019t happened in Gauteng, but why it hasn\u2019t happened yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Most of South Africa will move to level 3 lockdown by the end of May: Ramaphosa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coronavirus outbreak in South Africa has hit hardest in the Western Cape, home to the city of Cape Town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":309088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-397901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397911,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397901\/revisions\/397911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}