JOHANNESBURG – Cape Town has become the center of the COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa and one of Africa's hot spots.
The popular tourist destination at the southern tip of Africa had more than 12,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday, representing 63% of South Africa's 19,000 cases and about 10% of Africa's 95,000 cases.
Gauteng province containing Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, and the capital, Pretoria, had been expected to be the country's epicenter with its population density and poverty levels, but Cape Town defied predictions with high levels of community transmission. “No model upfront predicted what we see in Western Cape (province),” Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize told journalists Thursday. “The explosion of cases in