South Africa has recorded less than 1,000 cases of new Covid-19 cases in a year, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 3,674,042 since the pandemic broke out nearly two years ago in the country, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has announced.
In a statement on Monday, the NICD said the new 785 Covid-19 cases represented an increase of a 5.7% positivity rate for the diseases which was first detected on 20th March 2020 in the country.
The majority of the new cases were from Gauteng province (41%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape each accounting for 20%, the agency said.
Mpumalanga accounted for 6%, Free State and North West accounted for 5%, respectively; Eastern Cape accounted for 2%, and Limpopo and Northern Cape each accounted for 1% of the new cases, it added.
“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Ministry of Health, there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported,” the public health institute said.
“The ministry reports 183 deaths, and out of these, none occurred in the past 48 hours — bringing South Africa’s total fatalities to 99,412 to date,” the NICD said.
However, the past 24 hours have seen an increase of 29 hospital admissions nationwide, it added.
NM/as/APA