Covid-19 update: 311 new deaths bring SA’s total to 85,779

As of Thursday, South Africa has recorded a total of 85,779 Covid-19-related deaths, with 311 new deaths identified in the last 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has announced.

The institute on Thursday reported 4,215 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2.873,415.

This increase represents a 9.3% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape (21%), followed by Eastern Cape (20%). KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 19%; Free State accounted for 12%; Gauteng Province accounted for 10%; Northern Cape accounted for 7%; North West accounted for 6%; Mpumalanga accounted for 4%; and Limpopo accounted for 1% of today’s new cases.
There has been an increase of 275 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

17.236,691 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were the United States with 2,641, followed by Mexico with 897 and Brazil with 800.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 666,618 deaths from 41,536,687 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 588,597 deaths from 21,034,610 cases, India with 443,928 deaths from 33,347,325 cases, Mexico with 269,913 deaths from 3,542,189 cases, and Peru with 198,860 deaths from 2,163,312 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 603 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 312, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 309, the Republic of North Macedonia with 304, Montenegro with 289, and Bulgaria with 284.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,467,379 deaths from 44,101,105 cases, Europe 1,280,770 deaths from 65,513,286 infections, and Asia 816,508 deaths from 52,402,024 cases.

The United States and Canada has reported 693,890 deaths from 43,093,308 cases, Africa 204,429 deaths from 8,105,043 cases, the Middle East 191,970 deaths from 12,946,002 cases, and Oceania 1,887 deaths from 150,155 cases.

As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day’s tallies.

Compiled by Vhahangwele Nemakonde. Additional reporting by AFP