Cape Town – South Africa reported 1 306 new Covid-19 cases and 48 deaths on yesterday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said in a statement.
The NICD reports 1 306 new cases have been identified, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 905 613. The NICD said this increase represents a 4.0% positivity rate.
“As per the National Department of Health, a further 48 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 87 753 to date. A total of 17 760 235 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” the NICD said.
The majority of new cases are from Western Cape (22%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (18%).
Gauteng accounted for 14%, Eastern Cape accounted for 13%, Free State accounted for 11% and Northern Cape accounted for 9% of new cases.
Mpumalanga accounted for 6%, North West accounted for 4%, and Limpopo accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
The NICD said Thursday’s cases (1 678) cases were lower than that of the cases recorded on Wednesday (2 106).
The total number of Saturday’s cases (1 306) was lower than the cases recorded on Friday (1 635). It was also lower than the average number of new cases per day over the seven preceding days (1 377).
There had been an increase of 51 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in a televised address that South Africa would move to adjusted level 1 lockdown from adjusted level 2.
“The current trends and the progression of the pandemic means that a number of restrictions in place can now be eased as per the recommendation of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19,” he said.
The Department of Health will also soon be rolling out a vaccination certificate that promises to provide a secure and verifiable proof of vaccination.
Ramaphosa said this will also go a long way towards getting a number of international travel restrictions both from and into the country eased.
IOL