​Thembisa Shologu
Premier David Makhura has raised concerns about the increasing number of people succumbing to COVID-19 in the province since the intensity of the second wave in December.
Addressing the media in Ormonde, south of Johannesburg on Tuesday, Premier Makhura said the province's COVID-19 average fatalities was at 433 deaths per week.  
 "This is a matter of great concern, but we are not where we were, at the peak of the pandemic we had 578 people succumbing to COVID-19 in one week, but we are closely getting there.
"Our overall fatality rate is less than 2% per week, the number of people succumbing to COVD-19 is increasing quite significantly. In December, it had increased by 123% up until early January where it had increased by 155% and currently it has increased just by 10%," said Makhura.
The Premier said there was an increase in the number of hospital admissions in both public and private facilities which started rising again in December. 
"In the public sector those numbers have tripled to over 2 700 in the last seven days. We are not yet at the level where our hospitals are full but the last seven days have given us a sense that the numbers are increasing quite rapidly.
"What we are feeling now is a combination of the interactions that people had in December, especially mid-December to Christmas and in the run up to Christmas we had a lot of places where gatherings were taking place," he said. 
Gauteng currently has 50 000 active cases a number which the Premier said would have almost doubled to 90 000 active cases should the country stayed at level 1 of the lockdown.
"There's still more results to see. With level three intervention (28 December) the infection rate is less than what it could have been, but the infection rate is increasing. 
"Level 3 is going a long way in reducing the pace of the infection rate particularly driven by the infectiousness of the new variant.  Tshwane Municipality is the first key driver of the second wave; the first impact was principally about the event of the matriculants who went to Durban, the largest number of them came from Tshwane," he said.
 He further noted that the provincial government would  continue with social mobilisation of adherence and behavioural change, continue to increase the number of beds, staff (retain health professionals recruited during the first phase) and increase access to medical oxygen and oxygen points in some of government's healthcare sites, like Nasrec. 
Gauteng remains largely a hotspot area. "We are expecting to see increases in the Westrand on the bases of people returning to work especially in the mining areas," Makhura added.