By Siyabonga Mkhwanazi 
Jul 9, 2021
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Cape Town – The National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) will meet this weekend to look at the situation with numbers continuing to go up.
In the last few weeks infections have been in the region of between 15 000 and 20 000 a day.
This had led to President Cyril Ramaphosa to move the country back to level 4 lockdown.
But the NCCC will meet on Sunday to assess the situation.
This is as the third wave continues to affect a number of provinces.
The meeting of the NCCC comes after acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi announced on Friday that the vaccination programme will be extended to those between the ages of 35 and 49 years old.
“In the last 24 hours, 22 910 new cases were recorded, which represents a 30.4% positivity testing rate. Of these, Gauteng accounts for 11 747 new cases,” said Kubayi.
“Although all indications are that the number of cases in Gauteng are peaking, however, the province remains the epicentre of the third wave.
“We are extremely worried about the rising number of cases in other provinces that are highly likely to follow the same trend, most notably the Western Cape, Limpopo, North West, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.
“We are ramping up our vaccination roll-out programme so that the vaccines can reach the majority of our population so that more people can be protected from the devastating impact of the Covid-19 virus,” said Kubayi.
She said they were concerned about the growing infections in the Western Cape.