“If previous variants caused waves shaped like Kilimanjaro, omicron’s is more like the North Face of Everest,” Karim heading S Africa's pandemic response said
In the week ending 24 April, the Free State had the second-highest incidence risk of South Africa’s nine provinces behind only the Northern Cape, according to the National Institutes for Communicable Disease’s latest Weekly Epidemiological Brief. The incidence risk, a measure of people’s risk of contracting Covid-19, also increased marginally in the province compared with the previous week.
Of the 7,655 new cases of Covid-19 reported in the country in the week ending 24 April, 1,436 (18.8%) were in the Free State. Only Gauteng reported more cases in that week.
It is not only case numbers that provide reason for concern. According to the South African Medical Research Council’s latest Weekly Mortality Report, the number of deaths from natural causes in the Free State and Northern Cape was “concerningly high” in the week from 25 April to 1 May (the most recent week for which they report numbers). They estimate that there have been just less than 8,000 excess natural death