JOHANNESBURG: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to work after a week of isolation after testing positive Covid-19, his office was announced on Monday.
Ramaphosa has mild symptoms and is treated at his official residence in Cape Town by South African military health services because the country struggles the wave of viruses dominated by omicron variants that are highly transplanted.
“The President of Ramaphosa repeated his call for everyone in the country to stay safe with vaccinated, wearing facial masks, often wash or clean the hands, maintain social distance and avoid meeting,” his office said in a statement.
Ramaphosa is set to lead the last cabinet meeting this year on Wednesday this week, the statement said.
In the last 24 hours, South Africa has reported 15,465 new Covid-19 infections and three deaths.
South Africa 7 Days Daily Rolling Case has increased for the past two weeks from 16.9 new cases per 100,000 people at 5 to 33.8 new cases per 100,000 people on December 19.
Although Covid-19 cases confirmed with South Africa have had it jumped since mid-November, the number of those treated in hospitals and those who had died had not followed the same track.
When the country approaches the holiday season, where many industries are close and there are widespread trips to visit family, drive vaccination seems to stop.
South Africa has provided more than 27 million vaccine doses so that more than 38% of the adult population has been vaccinated, according to official statistics.
The country has around 19 million doses of Pfizer-Bionontech and Johnson vaccines, but the vaccination rate has dropped dramatically from an average of around 120,000 per day in November to less than 20,000 per day last week.
More than 5,000 JAB is given in the last 24 hours.
The target of South Africa to vaccinate 70% of the population at the end of the year can not be achieved.
South African President returns to work after covid isolation
