Media Release: Update on the coronavirus by Premier Alan Winde

8 July 2020

As of 1pm on 8 July, the Western Cape has 16 750 active cases of COVID-19, with a total of 72 808 confirmed cases and 53 881 recoveries.

Sub Districts Cape Town Metro:

Sub-districts:

Unallocated: 6018 (3493)

Data note:  As the province moves closer to the peak and the Department of Health is recording over 1000 new cases daily, it is not possible to check and verify that the address data supplied for each new case is correct, within the time frames required to provide regular and timely updates. This means that in some instances, cases could be allocated to the wrong sub-districts. We are working with the sub-districts to clean and verify the data and where errors are picked up locally, cases will be re-allocated to the correct areas. 

More data is available here: https://coronavirus.westerncape.gov.za/covid-19-dashboard

The Western Cape has recorded an additional 38 deaths, bringing the total number of COVID-19 related deaths in the province to 2177. We send our condolences to their loved ones at this time.

RX radio at Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital wins global innovation prize:

Today, I would like to send a huge congratulations to RX Radio, based at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. This station, which run by children, for children, has just been named a winner in the Reboot Health and Well-being innovation challenge, run by the World Health Organisation. This challenge is aimed at celebrating young people’s creativity and their solutions to some of the health issues they face.

​Innovation is one of the values that this government celebrates, and to see our province's children being honoured for their ideas makes me so very proud.

RX Radio is the first radio station in the world to have trained child reporters from within a hospital. Many of their reporters are patients at the hospital, or family members or friends of a patient.Since the advent of COVID-19, the young people of RX radio have developed innovative and exciting new ways to continue telling young people’s stories.

I myself have had the opportunity of being interviewed by these exceptional young people but I think what is most important is that young people are able to tell their own stories and the stories of their peers. Being able to hear and tell their stories at a time like this is necessary, and the young reporters of RX Radio have done an exceptional job.

You can watch the winner’s announcement video, with a presentation by one of the RX radio reporters here: https://ideas.unite.un.org/reboothealth/Page/Home and see some of the work that the RX Radio team has produced here: http://rxradio.co.za/coronavirus/experiences/

Issued by Western Cape Office of the Premier, 8 July 2020