South Africa’s confirmed Covid-19 cases have surpassed 600,000, the health ministry has said, although the number of new cases has been declining since a peak in July.
Despite imposing one of the world’s toughest lockdowns at the end of March when the country had only a few hundred cases, South Africa saw a surge in coronavirus infections that has left it the hardest hit on the continent.
The ministry said in a statement that South Africa now had a total of 603,338 cases and 12,843 deaths — accounting for more than half of the continent’s cases and around 47 per cent of its deaths, according to a Reuters tally of government and World Health Organisation data.
