The total number for Covid-19 cases exceeded the 500 000 mark in South Africa over the past weekend.

While pulling all available resources together to ameliorate the devastating blow of the pandemic continues to be both a plausible objective and a monumental challenge, the fight is being undermined by rogue elements within and outside the state.

The thinning of hospital equipment and necessary supplies has sparked public outrage, forcing the Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni to call for all government contracts records to be published.

Yet, frontline workers are making do with minimal and under-furnished facilities in different contagious corridors.

Although the future in a near term looks rather bleak, the increase in coronavirus infections is showing a slightly declining trend recently.

This is according to the daily statistics published by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the national Department of Health in SA.

The slide is more apparent in the Western Cape (WC) which had an explosion of cases earlier than other provinces. Even though the signs are encouraging, the WC still has the highest Covid-19 related deaths in the country – 3, 117 as of August 2. 

However, the numbers of those who died as a result of the virus keep fluctuating in the lower hundreds countrywide.

Sunday saw 213 people lose the battle against Covid-19 taking the tally to 8, 366 while 8, 195 new cases were recorded and the total accumulated to 511 485.