SA hits 70,000 Covid-19 deaths, with 243 fatalities recorded in 24 hours

SA hit another devastating Covid-19 milestone on Monday night, with more than 70,000 fatalities recorded since the outbreak of the coronavirus in March last year.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Monday that there were 243 new Covid-19 related fatalities in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 70,018.

In the past 24 hours, 5,683 new Covid-19 cases were recorded, taking the total cases recorded across the country to 2,383,490 to date.

Most of the new cases were recorded in Gauteng (1,559), followed by the Western Cape (1,192) and KwaZulu-Natal (832).

“The total number of cases today (n= 5,683) is lower than yesterday (n= 9,718) and lower than the average number of new cases per day over the seven preceding days (n= 11,600). The seven-day moving average daily number of cases has decreased,” the NICD said.

There were  479 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, meaning that there are now 16,412 people being treated in either a public or private facility.

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