Doctor takes swabs as Covid-19 community screening and testing takes place in Kleinvlei in South Africa. File picture: Brendan Magaar / African News Agency (ANA)
Cape Town – South Africa registered 2 489 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with nine related deaths occurring in the past 24-48 hours.
“Today the institute reports 2 489 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 637 673,” said the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in a statement released on Saturday.
The NICD said this represented a 7.6% positivity rate.
There has been an ongoing audit conducted across all 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 134 deaths and of these, nine occurred in the past 24-48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 96 985 to date,” the NICD added.
The institute said 22 656 918 tests have been conducted in the public and private sectors.
The majority of new cases today were from Gauteng, which accounted for 38%. This is followed by Western Cape (17%).
Kwa-Zulu Natal accounted for 14%; Mpumalanga 9%; Limpopo and North West each accounted for 6%; Free State 5%; Eastern Cape 3%; and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
The proportion of positive new cases/total new tested today is 7.6%, which is lower than yesterday (8.7%). The seven-day average is 8.3% today, which is lower than yesterday (8.5%).
A total of 65 356 vaccines doses were administered in the past 24 hours.
Gauteng administered 20 942 vaccine doses; KwaZulu-Natal 9284; Western Cape 9501; Eastern Cape 6599; Limpopo 4975; Free State 4710; Mpumalanga 3742; North West 4473; and Northern Cape 1130.
IOL
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