Covid-19 in SA: over 2 000 new infections and 9 deaths recorded

Cape Town - South Africa registered 2 267 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with nine related deaths occurring in the past 24 - 48 hours.

“Today the institute reports 2 267 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 657 09,” said the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in a statement released on Saturday.

The NICD indicated that this increase represents a 7.5% positivity rate.

There has been an ongoing audit exercise conducted across all of South Africa’s nine provinces to address a backlog of cases and deaths, the Department of Health said in a statement last month.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDOH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDOH reports 319 deaths and of these, nine occurred in the past 24 - 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 98 617 to date,” the NICD added.

The institute said 22 860 591 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng which accounted for 37%. This is followed by Western Cape (20%).

KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 12%; Mpumalanga accounted for 10%; North West and Free State each accounted for 6% respectively; Eastern Cape and Limpopo each accounted for 4% respectively; and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.

A total of 71 787 vaccines doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

Gauteng administered 23 267 vaccine doses, KwaZulu-Natal administered 10 470 vaccine doses, the Western Cape administered 9 748 vaccine doses, Eastern Cape administered 6 626 vaccine doses, Limpopo administered 5 520 doses, Free State administered 6 220 vaccine doses, Mpumalanga administered 4 234 vaccine doses, North West administered 4 557 doses and Northern Cape administered 1 145 vaccine doses.

IOL