Cape Town is South Africa's COVID-19 hot spot
CGTN
A soldier stands guard as police officers check documents of commuters at a minibus taxi rank during a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in Cape Town, South Africa, May 13, 2020 /Reuters

A soldier stands guard as police officers check documents of commuters at a minibus taxi rank during a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in Cape Town, South Africa, May 13, 2020 /Reuters

Cape Town, one of South Africa's popular tourist destinations, has become a COVID-19 hotspot, raking in numbers higher than many countries in the continent.

The port city on South Africa's southwest coast had registered more than 12,000 infections as of Thursday, representing 63% of South Africa's 19,000 cases and about 10% of Africa's 95,000 cases.

"No model upfront predicted what we see in Western Cape (province)," Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize told journalists Thursday. "The explosion of cases in Western Cape is out of the expected range and it may be that we need to have additional interventions to try and contain those numbers."

South Africa's is the continent's worst affected country by the pandemic according to data from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cape Town's figures are attributed to its frequent foreign visitors, some of whom may not have shown any symptoms of COVID-19. The city has several direct flights to many European capitals.

Officials project that the city will reach its peak of cases around the end of June, while the rest of South Africa is expected to peak in August or September.

The Modelling and Simulation Hub, Africa, a group of scientists and academics advising the government, project that South Africa may see between 40,000 to 45,000 deaths by November.

Source(s): AP