Covid-19: 592 new cases, 83 deaths recorded in SA in 24 hours

There were 592 new Covid-19 cases recorded in SA in the past 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said on Tuesday.

The new infections came at a positivity rate — the number of positive results against the number of tests done in the same period — of just 2.1%.

According to the NICD, there were also 83 new Covid-19 related deaths recorded in the past 24 hours. This means that there have been 2,912,938 confirmed infections and 88,429 confirmed deaths to date.

The country also passed a significant milestone on Tuesday, with the 18-millionth test having now been done. There have been 18,016,455 Covid-19 tests conducted to date across the public and private sectors.

Of the new cases, the NICD said, only KZN (128) and the Western Cape (102) recorded more than 100 infections in the past day. Gauteng recorded the next-highest, with 99.

There were also 58 new hospital admissions, meaning that 5,252 people are being treated in the country's hospitals for Covid-19 related complications.

According to the latest vaccine statistics, there were 205,681 jabs administered by 5pm on Tuesday. In total, there have been 19,461,202 vaccines administered.

There are also more than 10.2-million people who have been fully vaccinated in SA, either with the single-dose J&J vaccine (4,446,041 administered) or the second dose of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine (5,772,508 administered).

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