The mayor of South Africa’s commercial capital Johannesburg has gone into self-quarantine following a coronavirus infection, his office confirmed on Monday.
In a statement, the office said Geoff Makhubo has “gone into self-quarantine as part of the recovery process.”
“The mayor will continue to monitor and provide guidance on work currently being carried out to contain and manage the spread of Covid-19 in the city while in self-quarantine,” it said.
Makhubo joins 13,155 others who tested positive for Covid-19 overnight from the 55,593 tests conducted by the health ministry on Sunday nationwide.
According to the mayor’s office, Johannesburg and other parts of Gauteng province “are officially in a third wave.”
“Residents are urged to take the necessary non-medical precautions seriously and to ensure they wear masks, maintain social distance and limit movement incompliance with the Level 3 regulations currently in place,” the office said.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the pandemic claimed 112 more lives in the 24 hours to Sunday, bringing the national death tally to 58,702 since the outbreak in March 2020 in the country.
The majority of new cases were recorded in Gauteng province, after 8,640 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus in the last 24 hours in the region, NICD said.
Gauteng now has a cumulative total of 545,262 cases of the coronavirus, with 477,493 recoveries and 12,079 deaths, NICD said.
Meanwhile, the South African government has deployed military medical teams to help Gauteng hospitals where health workers are said to be overburdened.
The rising viral cases have led to fears of risking a burnout among the health workers due to the resurgence, which has seen increased patient admissions and increased bed space in hospital wards, the health ministry said.
Three of the hospitals in dire need of support include Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto, and Jubilee Hospital and Bronkhorstspruit Hospital – both in Pretoria, the ministry said.
Additional wards have been added to these hospitals to create more capacity to handle more patients during the third wave of the pandemic, it added.
NM/jn/APA