COVID-19 LIVE UPDATES | 1,716 new cases and 40 more deaths in SA

May 31 2020 - 21:03

1,716 new cases and 40 more deaths in SA

The health department on Sunday announced that there were 1,716 new Covid-19 cases in SA, bringing the total to 32,683.

There were also another 40 deaths recorded since Saturday. This brings the country's death toll to 683.

So far, 16,809 patients have recovered, which translates to a recovery rate of 51.4%.

The provincial breakdown of cases, deaths and recoveries was on Sunday provided as:

Eastern Cape - 3,927 cases, 82 deaths, 1,987 recoveries 

Free State - 278 cases, 8 deaths, 124 recoveries

Gauteng - 4,003 cases, 33 deaths, 2,060 recoveries 

KwaZulu-Natal - 2,545 cases, 52 deaths, 1,248 recoveries 

Limpopo - 177 cases, 3 deaths, 143 recoveries

Mpumalanga - 121 cases, 0 deaths, 72 recoveries

North West - 175 cases, 1 death, 45 recoveries

Northern Cape - 69 cases, 1 death, 31 recoveries

Western Cape - 21,382 cases, 503 deaths, 11,099 recoveries

May 31 2020 - 20:57

SANParks to open some parks on Monday

SANParks would like to announce that only its open-access national parks, namely Golden Gate Highlands, parts of Garden Route, and Table Mountain National Park, with the exception of Boulders Beach and Cape Point, will allow access to visitors from Monday, June 1 2020.

The minister of environment, forestry and fisheries will release a statement in due course regarding the opening of the other parks.

May 31 2020 - 20:09

'The president should have announced the changes' - Ramaphosa on the cigarette U-turn

President Cyril Ramaphosa has conceded that the backtrack on cigarette sales in level 4 should have been communicated by himself and not by co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

“When I did announce that we were lifting the ban on the sale of cigarettes, and later changed it ... the change came about as a result of a flurry of concerns and objections raised by a number of South Africans, in their thousands, we then had to go back to the drawing back and finally announce a change,” said Ramaphosa on Sunday.

“Obviously people had taken issue with the way the announcement was made. It was made by Minister Dlamini-Zuma, and what we should have done is, the president having announced it, the president should have been the one to announce it again and give reasons why this was being changed. That was not done. We will concede that as well,” he said.

Ramaphosa said this should have been done to avoid “a very unpleasant type of situation” where people started saying the minister was undermining the president.