{"id":1170,"date":"2020-04-01T13:36:30","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T13:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/wp\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2020-04-01T14:16:56","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T14:16:56","slug":"five-dead-as-coronavirus-cases-rise-to-1-353-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/?p=1170","title":{"rendered":"Five dead as coronavirus cases rise to 1 353 in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Africa now has 1 353 confirmed cases of infections and five people have died from Covid-19, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The minister was speaking during a press conference in Durban.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said the latest death was from KwaZulu-Natal, where a 46-year-old woman from uMlazi, Durban, died. The woman had underlying chronic asthma and hypertension, the minister said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other death recorded on Tuesday was from Gauteng, where a 79-year-old man with no history of travel who had been to Cape Town died after having respiratory distress.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than 39 000 people had been tested, so far, he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The other four deaths:&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Western Cape &#8211; a 48-year-old woman with an underlying condition<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Free-State &#8211; an 85-year-old male pensioner who had been at the church which is the hotspot for the virus in that province<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KZN &#8211; a 74-year-old male pensioner from Ladysmith<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mkhize said the death of the uMlazi woman was confirmed on Tuesday &#8220;a few hours ago&#8221;. The woman had been admitted to hospital on seeking attention for hypertension and asthma. She was subsequently for coronavirus, and found to be positive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We do wish to convey our condolences,&#8221; he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe width=\"3\" height=\"3\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The minister also said there was a huge pressure on laboratory services to test more people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We picked up backlogs in system. We moved tests to national lab services. By Friday we cleared 4 000 lab tests. Watching the system for backlogs,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said government was changing the testing strategy to one of a mass testing strategy. He said Gauteng started the programme on Tuesday and he would be visiting other provinces to ensure this was done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We won\u2019t go to areas at the same time. This morning Gauteng already started this programme. I will be visiting other provinces<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We have noticed a trend in past week. The rate of increase is not as high as we anticipated. We are observing the trend. We anticipated 4000-5000 but we haven\u2019t reached that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We will see more and more mobile vans. We want to be ahead of the curve. Patients are recovering well. Most patients are stable. Numbers in hospital also increasing,&#8221; said the minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The minister said government was working hard to ensure health workers were protected with protective gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Scaling up of testing might increase number of infections. Remains serious and a challenge as we go to cold winter months. The step for lockdown was important. Remember hygiene and stay at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Reduction of traffic in trains and taxis has helped contain spread. We are picking up positive cases but quarantine means infection won\u2019t spread,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa now has 1 353 confirmed cases of infections and five people have died from Covid-19, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday. The minister was speaking during a&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,9,12,10],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","tag-corona","tag-coronavirus","tag-south-african-death-rate","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diepslootnews.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}