SA records 3,159 Covid-19 cases and 276 deaths in the past 24 hours

After two days of fewer than 2,000 new Covid-19 cases, health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said on Wednesday night that the number of infections in a 24-hour period had breached the 3,000 mark.

There were 3,159 new infections recorded in the past day, taking the total number of Covid-19 cases recorded to date to 1,482,412.

However, it was another day where the positivity rate - which is the number of new cases against the number of tests in the same period - was again below the 10% mark. The new infections came from 35,195 tests, at a positivity rate of 8.97%.

Mkhize also reported 276 new Covid-19 related deaths, taking the total death toll from the coronavirus in SA in 47,145.

Of the new deaths, 126 were in Gauteng, 34 were in KwaZulu-Natal, 33 in the Eastern Cape, 31 in the Western Cape, 21 in Mpumalanga, 20 in the Free State, eight in the Northern Cape and three in Limpopo.

To date, 1,367,247 recoveries have been recorded, at a recovery rate of 92.7%.

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