Covid-19: 195 new deaths and 8,170 cases recorded in 24 hours

It took 110 days for SA to get to 100,000 Covid-19 infections - but the latest 100,000 have come in just eight days.

A total of 381,798 cases have now been confirmed, health minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday night. This is an increase of 8,170 on Monday's total. This is just the second time in the past two weeks that SA has recorded fewer than 10,000 cases in a 24-hour period.

Gauteng has recorded 139,435 cases, the Western Cape 86,329 cases, the Eastern Cape 66,759 cases and KwaZulu-Natal 47,685 cases.

The number of mortalities from the virus rose by 195 to 5,368. The latest 1,000 deaths have come in a week, compared with 95 days for the first 1,000 deaths.

When lockdown was imposed on March 26, SA had 927 cases of Covid-19. Its first fatality was reported the following day.

By the time the lockdown was relaxed to alert level 3 on June 1 - 89 days after the first case was reported - there were 34,357 confirmed infections and 705 deaths.

Fifty days later, the number of cases and the number of active cases have multiplied by about 11 and the number of deaths by more than seven.

The number of recoveries reported by Mkhize on Tuesday was 208,144 - almost 12 times the total reported when lockdown was eased.

The latest stats were based on a total of 2,536,921 tests, of which 31,275 were in the last 24-hour cycle.