Cape Town - South Africa registered 4 592 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with 64 related deaths occurring in the past 24 - 48 hours.
“Today the institute reports 4 592 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 556 633,” said the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in a statement released on Saturday.
The NICD indicated that this increase represents a 12.5% positivity rate.
There has been an ongoing audit exercise conducted across all of South Africa’s nine provinces to address a black log of cases and deaths, the Department of Health said in a statement earlier this 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 161 deaths and of these, 64 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 93 278 to date,” the NICD added.
The institute said 21 772 893 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.
The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape which accounted for 26%. This is followed by Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal with 21% each.
The Eastern Cape accounted for 10%; Limpopo accounted for 6%; Free State, Mpumalanga, and North West each accounted for 4% respectively. Northern Cape accounted for 3% of today’s new cases.
A total of 87 328 vaccines doses were administered in the last 24 hours.
Gauteng administered 28 799 vaccine doses, KwaZulu-Natal administered 14 435 vaccine doses, Western Cape administered 13 154 vaccine doses, Eastern Cape administered 7 914 vaccine doses, Limpopo administered 6 552 doses, Free State administered 5 185 vaccine doses, Mpumalanga administered 4 609 vaccine doses, North West administered 4 328 doses and Northern Cape administered 2 352 vaccine doses.
IOL