South Africa recorded its highest ever single-day coronavirus infections of 17,493 cases on Thursday amid concerns about the impact of a third wave of the disease.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Thursday that the new cases resulted in 622 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, with 166 patients dying from the respiratory disease. This pushed the country’s death toll to 59,258 people.
According to the NICD, 10,806 or 62 percent of the latest Covid-19 cases were detected in Gauteng Province, followed by 1,778 cases in the Western Cape Province (10%).
The NICD said the increase in the 24 hours brought the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 1,861.065 infections.
Head of the Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response at the institute, Michelle Groome said the sharp rise in the reported daily Covid-19 cases was alarming.
She said this was especially concerning in the country’s hardest hit province of Gauteng where daily infections have exceeded those seen during the previous two waves which started in March 2020 – the period the deadly disease broke out in the country.
“Ultimately, it is up to each one of us to play our role to reduce the spread of the virus by limiting our interaction with others as much as possible during this time of the third wave,” Groome said.
As of Thursday, there are some 178,837,204 confirmed cases of Covid-19 globally, including 3,880,450 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
NM/jn/APA