SA records more than 3,000 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours for second consecutive day

More than 3,000 new Covid-19 infections were recorded in a 24-hour period for the second straight day, health minister Zweli Mkhize said on Friday.

There were also more than 100 Covid-19 related deaths recorded in the past 24 hours — the first time this has happened since April 20. Mkhize explained that this was because the Free State and Northern Cape “have back captured data over several months as part of their auditing processes”.

Mkhize said the 3,141 new infections reported on Friday night took the cumulative number of confirmed infections to 1,608,393. The new cases came from 41,994 tests at a positivity rate of 7.47%.

Of the 112 new Covid-19 related fatalities, 42 were in the Free State, 40 in the North West, 14 in Gauteng, 10 in the Western Cape, five in KwaZulu-Natal and one in the Eastern Cape. No fatalities were recorded in Limpopo, Mpumalanga or the Northern Cape in the past 24 hours.

The deaths mean that 55,124 Covid-19 fatalities have been recorded across SA since the outbreak of the coronavirus in March last year.

TimesLIVE