CAPE TOWN, South Africa – The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in South Africa rose to 51 on Sunday, up by 13 from a total announced by the health ministry 24 hours earlier.
An emergency Cabinet meeting to be held on Sunday could decide whether South Africa should impose stricter measures such as travel bans on countries which have not controlled Covid-19 infection rates, according to a report in the Sunday Times.
Seven of the new cases were registered in the country’s economic heartland, Gauteng province, five in the tourism hotspot of Western Cape and one in KwaZulu-Natal province, a ministry statement said.
Twelve of the 13 of those infected had travelled abroad to countries including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Spain. One traveller from Iran tested positive.
South Africa, Africa’s most-advanced economy, first detected the virus on March 5 and the jump in its positive test results comes as the outbreak spreads across the continent with the Kingdom of eSwatini, Seychelles, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Namibia reporting their first confirmed cases in the last 48 hours.
On Saturday, 114 South Africans who were stuck in the Chinese city of Wuhan during a lockdown in the epicentre of the virus were flown home to spend between 14-21 days at a special quarantine centre in the northern city of Polokwane in Limpopo province.
So far, all of them have tested negative, the health ministry said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for an urgent cabinet meeting on Sunday to explore ways of intensifying measures to contain the outbreak, the ministry said.
