Good news as SA’s Covid-19 positivity rate drops below 10%, with 2,649 cases reported in 24-hours

But stats showed 547 new fatalities recorded

02 February 2021 - 23:01 By matthew savides
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On Tuesday health minister Zweli Mkhize said SA recorded 2,649 new coronavirus infections and 547 deaths related to Covid-19 in the past 24-hours.
On Tuesday health minister Zweli Mkhize said SA recorded 2,649 new coronavirus infections and 547 deaths related to Covid-19 in the past 24-hours.
Image: GCIS

There was mostly good news about the country’s battle against the coronavirus on Tuesday, with health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize saying the positivity rate for new daily  infections had dropped below the 10% benchmark.

In mid-November, Mkhize said one in 10 Covid-19 tests returning positive - a positivity rate of 10% - was considered to be within acceptable levels.

On Tuesday, the minister said 2,649 new cases had been recorded in 24-hours, taking the total number of infections to 1,458,958. This came from 28,942 tests at a positivity rate of 9.15%.

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However, this good news was offset by another deadly day, with 547 deaths deaths related to Covid-19 confirmed in the past 24-hours, but Mkhize said this figure took into account 134 deaths recorded in Limpopo, which had “captured deaths from retrospective audits between September 6 and January 29”.

Apart from Limpopo, 143 deaths were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal, 91 in Gauteng, 69 in the Western Cape, 68 in the Eastern Cape, 30 in the Free State, nine in Mpumalanga and three in the Northern Cape.

This meant 44,946 deaths related to Covid-19 had been recorded across SA to date.

Mkhize also reported that 1,318,504 recoveries had been recorded at a recovery rate of 90%.

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