COVID-19 updates - Germany, Brazil and South Africa

Local COVID-19 outbreak originating from German slaughterhouse brings back lockdown rules.

The re-introduction will be the first return of lockdown measures in the country since May.

The Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Armin Laschet, said that the restrictions will return to the Gütersloh district in Western Germany until the 30th of June.

The Gütersloh district is home to approximately 360,000 residents.

Although Germany was initially praised for their response to COVID-19 concerns, there are growing worries that infections are beginning to rise again. The reproduction number or the number of people that an infected person could pass the virus onto in Germany, commonly referred to as the "R number" is 2.76.

Germany is not the only country with rising COVID-19 concerns. Yesterday, Brazil had over 21,000 new cases of the virus, bringing their total number of cases to 1.1 million. Brazil has also become the country with the second-highest death toll globally, with 51,271 fatalities.

Moreover, South Africa became the country with the highest number of cases in Africa, with 100,000 confirmed cases as of Monday. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 50% of Africa's cases of COVID-19 are in South Africa.

Although South Africa's number of deaths have been growing towards 2,000, data shows that 52.6% of patients with the virus have recovered.