Days after President Cyril Ramaphosa issued tighter coronavirus restrictions to contain a surging third wave of the deadly disease, South Africa recorded its highest daily spike in cases since January with 13,246 people testing positive and 77 lives lost to Covid-19 overnight, APA learnt on Thursday.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the latest development means that the proportion of those testing positive has increased to 21.7% nationally as Gauteng province continued to lead the surge, with 7,859 cases recorded in the past 24 hours.
The NICD said the provinces of Northern Cape, Free State, North West and Gauteng were now officially in a third wave, with the remaining five regions witnessing a sustained increase in the past week.
“These concerning figures represent the highest number of daily cases and positivity rate recorded since January 2021,” the NICD said.
The total number of laboratory-confirmed cases now stands at 1,774,312 since the outbreak of the disease in the country in March 2020, according to the public health institute.
The country has lost 58,223 lives to the disease, local health authorities said.
Globally, as of 16 June 2021, there have been 176,303,596 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 3,820,026 deaths, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organisation.
NM/jn/APA