Cape Town - South Africa registered 1 571 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with one Covid-related death occurring in the past 24 to 48 hours.
“Today the institute reports 1 571 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 693 532,” the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said on Saturday.
The institute indicated that this increase represented a 5.8% positivity rate.
There has been an ongoing audit exercise conducted across all of South Africa’s nine provinces to address a backlog of cases and deaths, the Department of Health said in January.
“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health, there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the (department) reports three deaths and, of these, one occurred in the past 24 to 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 99 712 to date,” the institute added.
It said 23 392 502 tests had been conducted in both the public and private sectors.
The majority of new cases today were from Gauteng, which accounted for 34% of the total number. This was followed by the Western Cape (24%).
KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 20% of today’s new cases, North West 6%, Mpumalanga 5%, Free State 4%, Eastern Cape and Limpopo 3% each, and Northern Cape 1%.
The proportion of positive new cases out of total new tests on Saturday was 5.8%, which is lower than Friday (7.5%). The seven-day average was 6.2% on Saturday, which was the same as that on Friday.
There had been an increase of 24 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
A total of 90 176 vaccines doses were administered in the last 24 hours.
Gauteng administered 27 816 vaccine doses, KwaZulu-Natal 12 752, the Western Cape 12 976, the Eastern Cape 9 512, Limpopo 6 430, the Free State 7 372, Mpumalanga 5 890, North West 5 729, and the Northern Cape 1 699.
IOL