South Africa has registered 17,489 new coronavirus cases and 453 deaths from its laboratory-confirmed 2,236,805 cases detected in the country since March 2020, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced on Thursday.
“This increase represents a 31 percent positivity rate,” the NICD said, adding that Gauteng remained the epicentre with 46 percent of the new cases, followed by the Western Cape with 17 percent.
According to the institute, Limpopo accounted for 10 percent, the North West 9 percent, Mpumalanga 7 percent, the Eastern Cape 5 percent, Free State 3 percent, and KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape 2 percent each.
“The total number of cases today is higher than yesterday but lower than the average number of new cases per day over the seven preceding days,” the institute said.
The 453 new deaths recorded brought the tally to 65,595 deaths since the outbreak, it said, adding the country recorded 787 additional hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
This meant there were now 17,560 patients with Covid-19 receiving treatment at various health institutions out of the 200,694 people who are currently infected across the country, the institute said.
According to the latest data, the country now has administered 4,688,779 vaccines — with 146,230 being distributed in the past 24 hours, it added.
NM/as/APA