Over 3 160 New Covid-19 Infections Reported In SA

A total of 3 169 new Covid-19 infections were recorded across South Africa’s nine provinces yesterday in addition to 12 related deaths in the last 24 to 48 hours.

“Today the institute reports 3 169 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 634 811,” the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.

A slight decrease in testing was experienced in South Africa in the last 24 hours compared to Wednesday, as 36 113 tests were conducted.

The number of yesterday’s tests, taking into account the number of new cases, represents a positivity rate of 8.8%.

The majority of new cases in the last 24 hours were identified in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal – the three provinces contributed the highest number of infections since the pandemic began.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. The NDoH reports 203 deaths and of these, 12 occurred in the past 24 t 48 hours,” the institute added.

A further 86 hospital admissions were recorded on Thursday, as the number of current admissions were 4 354.

The total number of currently admitted patients in hospitals per day:

Monday: 4 585
Tuesday: 4 502
Wednesday: 4 455
Thursday: 4 354
Meanwhile, 65 941 vaccines were administered yesterday, with Gauteng leading the country on a daily basis in regards to the number of administered vaccines compared to other provinces.

Breakdown of SA’s new cases per province:

Gauteng: 1 003
Western Cape: 590
KwaZulu-Natal: 446
Mpumalanga: 366
North West: 224
Limpopo: 187
Free State: 176
Eastern Cape: 119
Northern Cape: 58