No images? Click here 18 May, 2021 Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about a possible third Covid-19 wave. While there have been increases in daily Covid-19 cases across the country recently the numbers have not spiked significantly. There are, however, parts of the country that are showing signs of a resurgence in cases. So, what does the data look like? Is this the third wave? 📈In a media statement last week, the National Department of Health said that from 3-9 May 2020, positive Covid-19 cases increased by 46% when compared with the week before (26 April to 2 May).The department's surveillance system monitors a number of key indicators, including daily positive cases, positivity rate, hospital admissions, and deaths. These are calculated using a seven-day average to eliminate daily fluctuations.We looked at some of these key indicators as well as a few of our own to see the current status of Coronavirus in South Africa. Daily casesThe chart below shows the time periods the department of health has been comparing. The larger red bars represent the total number of cases for a week. We can see these are increasing from 8,593 cases (26 April-2 May) to 12,531 cases (3-9 May) and then 17,133 cases (10-16 May). Each week runs from Monday to Sunday, the blue bars show the daily cases, and typically fewer cases are reported on Mondays and Tuesdays following the weekend.What about R?For the past year we have been following the Rt estimates for coronavirus. The R number is a measure of how a virus is spreading. Put simply, it represents the average number of people an infected person is likely to infect. If the Rt is 1, an infected person is likely to infect one other person. So the ideal is for Rt to be below 1. You can read an excellent explanation of R here. From the start of 2021 the Rt estimates for South Africa have been well below 1, dropping as low as 0.36 in late January. But that has now changed and during April and early May the number has risen to just over 1.3. On 15 May the Rt estimate was 1.33. Since April 2020 the highest Rt has been was 1.56. Are more tests coming back positive?One of the more important numbers to watch when tracking Covid-19 changes is the number of tests conducted for each positive case. The lower the number of tests for each positive case found the more people are infected. In the chart below we can see that the number of tests performed for each positive case has dropped quite sharply over the past few weeks. Each bar is a week. For the week ending 9 May the number of tests per case is 15. This is down sharply from 26 for the week ending 11 April. With fewer tests required to return a positive result it means that more of the people being tested are infected. Zooming in on the provincesMuch of the talk around a third wave is not so much that the national numbers have shown significant increases but rather because particular parts of the country have seen increases in new cases. Looking at the number of new cases reported in the various provinces we can see increases in a few of them. The notable ones are Gauteng, Northern Cape, North West and the Free State. Although at this stage the increases are still relatively small you can just start to see the change if you look at the historical data of the pandemic. In the chart below each coloured area represents a province and the number of daily cases in each. You can clearly see the two waves South Africa has already experienced and there is a small but obvious increase on the far right of the chart. Breaking this down further you can see the patterns of the waves in each province. How are the hospitals looking?At the start of January, hospitalisations decreased after the end of the second wave. Since the beginning of April the number of people hospitalised per week has begun to tick up slightly from around 1,600 at the end of March to 2,259 at the start of May, according to national hospital admissions data from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD). The data provided covers 647 hospitals, of which 395 are public hospitals. Vaccinations 💉The Sisonke Research Programme has now concluded, 478,733 health workers were vaccinated with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The second phase of the vaccine programme started yesterday with the distribution of the two-dose Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. The department of health said on Monday night that vaccination numbers for phase 2 were still being reconciled and that it would announce these numbers starting today. Overall, South Africans seem to be happy to get vaccinated with 71% of people saying they would get vaccinated. By Sunday evening 1.227 million people over 60 had registered for a vaccination and 914,000 of the estimated 1.2 million health workers had registered. How is the rest of Africa looking on the vaccination front? 🌍Pretty well, actually. Four countries have administered over a million vaccinations but the tiny island of Seychelles has vaccinated the highest proportion of its population. A lot of African countries have been receiving Covax vaccines which have been delayed because of the need for vaccines in India. Do you know someone who may be interested in this newsletter? And now for something new 📢Later this month we will be launching our new website The Outlier which will publish data-based journalism on a broad range of topics, from health and education to climate change and politics. As a subscriber to this newsletter, you will be one of the first to know when we launch the site. Tell us what you thinkWe hope you found this issue of the newsletter useful. We'd love to hear from you. Send comments, suggestions, criticisms to data@mediahack.co.za You can also still contribute to our fundraising campaign here: This newsletter produced by: Top photo: Vaccinations at the Khayelitsha Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. |