State of play after 400 days of South African lockdown
30 Apr 2021
Mortality: An attendant at Avbob in Pretoria waits for the coffin of a patient who died of illness related to Covid-19. The pandemic has, so far, claimed the lives of 54 237 South Africans. (Marco Longari/AFP)
Friday, April 30, marks day 400 since South Africa was placed under a national state of disaster caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Just over a year later, the country has recorded more than 1.5-million infections and 54 237 Covid-19 related deaths. Hit hard by the second wave of infections at the start of the year a third wave is expected, while South Africa is administering vaccines at a rate slowed by setbacks.
Mkhize: South Africa won’t end up in India-like Covid third wave crisis
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize appeared before the health portfolio committee on Wednesday to assure members that South Africans should not fear a similar surge in Covid-19 infections as being experienced in India.
Mkhize and the department’s director general, Sandile Buthelezi, told the committee that South Africa’s Johnson & Johnson vaccination programme had resumed, and that phase two would start in mid-May.
India is experiencing a deadly second wave of the virus, with the official death toll having passed 200 000. The country has seen more Covid-19 cases in the past seven days than any other nation, and the need for oxygen tanks has reached a crisis level.
Wednesday, 03 Mar 2021 10:24 AM MYT
Vernon Jordan (left) seen here with former US president Barack Obama at Howard University in Washington May 7, 2016. ― Reuters file pic
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WASHINGTON, March 3 ― Vernon Jordan, who grew up in the segregated South to become an influential leader in the American civil rights movement, Washington politics and Wall Street, has died at age 85, his daughter said yesterday.
Jordan, who in 1980 was badly wounded by a white supremacist sniper in Indiana, died on Monday night peacefully and “surrounded by loved ones,” daughter Vickee Jordan said in a statement.