South Africa recorded 8,561 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday as the recently discovered Omicron variant took hold on the country.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Thursday that Gauteng was the worst-hit province after some 6,168 individuals tested positive for the virus.
The Western Cape province was a distant second with 626 cases, followed by KwaZulu-Natal (476), Mpumalanga (375) and North West (356).
NICD revealed that some 28 people lost their lives on Wednesday, pushing the death toll to 89,871.
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research director Ridhwaan Suliman said the seven-day average for Gauteng province was up 424 percent week-on-week, while the case incidence doubled every 3.5 days.
New admissions rose by 144 percent or doubled every six days, Suliman said.
The latest figures pushed the cumulative total of confirmed cases in South Africa to 2,976,613 since the first cases was reported in March 2020.
NM/jn/APA