After two years of providing daily updates on the number of new COVID-19 cases in the country, the Department of Health and National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) are changing things up.
The department and NICD have announced that the end of daily updates of case numbers.
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The last daily update was on Friday, 29 July. The update noted that there were 354 new cases in South Africa for that date. 171 of these were in Gauteng.
Hospital admissions had increased by 18 in the past 24 hours. Five people died due to the virus.
Active cases in the country also stood at 4,966 in total.
How are COVID-19 case updates changing in South Africa?
While the department is ending daily updates on COVID cases, this doesn’t mean they’re stopping new case reports completely.
Rather, the frequency is changing to the existing weekly updates.
The Department said in a statement: “The department will, with effect from 01 August 2022, publish the COVID-19 surveillance data on a weekly basis, but continue to closely monitor the situation.”
This will free up NICD staff working on reporting structures to return to their permanent jobs full-time.
The statement also noted that this doesn’t mean the pandemic is over.
“Until such time that the World Health Organization announce that the pandemic is over, we urge people to vaccinate and continue to do everything possible to keep themselves safe against the current and future variants of concern,” the statement says.
The department also urged residents to keep track of trends and any announced variants of concern.
While the statement did not confirm it, it is likely that updates would increase in frequency again if South Africa faces another large wave of infections.
The NICD is also keeping track of monkeypox cases and a measles outbreak in Tshwane.
Read more: How to keep track of the COVID-19 vaccine stats in South Africa
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