More than 14,700 new Covid-19 cases and 384 deaths recorded in 24 hours

18 August 2021 - 20:12 By TimesLIVE
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The NICD's Prof Adrian Puren said statistics showed there was a decrease in the number of new daily cases and a smaller percent testing positive. However, some provinces were still a worry.
The NICD's Prof Adrian Puren said statistics showed there was a decrease in the number of new daily cases and a smaller percent testing positive. However, some provinces were still a worry.
Image: Gallo Images/Papi Morake

The Western Cape appears to be showing “early signs” that it has reached the peak of its third wave of Covid-19 infections, an expert said on Wednesday, but there were still concerns over rising cases in four other provinces.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases said on Wednesday that there were 14,728 new Covid-19 cases identified in SA in the past 24 hours, along with 384 coronavirus related deaths.

The Western Cape was again the worst-hit province, with 3,931 new infections, followed by KwaZulu-Natal (3,750), the Eastern Cape (1,877) and Gauteng (1,756). The Free State recorded just shy of the 1,000 mark, with 995 cases in the past 24 hours.

The NICD's acting executive director, Prof Adrian Puren, said statistics showed there was “a decrease in the number of new daily cases and percent testing positive”, but that some provinces were still a worry.

“The Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape still appear to be on the upward slope of the third wave, though the Western Cape is showing early signs of reaching the peak of their third wave. Whereas the Free State and Northern Cape provinces continue to see a steady number of new cases,” said Puren.

In some positive news, however, there were “sustained decreases in case numbers” in Gauteng, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga.

According to the latest NICD data, the newly identified cases bring to 2,638,981 the cumulative number of Covid-19 infections recorded across SA since the outbreak of the virus in March 2020. There have been 78,377 recorded fatalities to date.

The NICD said that there was an increase of 575 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, meaning that 13,929 people are being treated for Covid-19 related illnesses in the country's hospitals.

According to the latest vaccine statistics, SA was just shy of the 10-million mark for the total number of jabs administered. There were 194,882 jabs administered in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 9,962,111 to date.

Of these, 2,223,080 were the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and 7,739,031 were of the double-dose Pfizer vaccine (of which 2,259,813 people had received the second dose). 

TimesLIVE


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