New Covid-19 infections jump over 19% with more hospital admissions

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases has recorded 1,954 new Covid-19 cases in SA in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

This increase represents a 19.3% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases are from Gauteng (55%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (23%). The Western Cape accounted for 11%; the Free State 3%; the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 2%; and Limpopo and the Northern Cape each accounted for 1%.

There has been an increase of 65 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours. There are now 2,282 patients in hospital.

Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the national department of health (NDoH), the NICD said there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. In the latest update, the NDoH reported 30 deaths and of these, two occurred in the past 24-48 hours. This brings the total number of fatalities to 100,333 to date.

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