Covid-19 update: 5,920 new cases reported in SA

As of Thursday, South Africa has recorded a total of 3.546,808 positive cases of Covid-19, with 5,920 new cases identified in the past 24 hours.

This increase represents a 14.3% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape (25%), followed by Gauteng (20%). Kwa-Zulu Natal accounted for 19%; Eastern Cape and Limpopo each accounted for 9% respectively; Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 5% respectively; Free State and Northern Cape each accounted for 4% respectively of today’s new cases.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDoH reports 159 deaths and of these, 51 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 92,989 to date,” said the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service.

There has been an increase of 293 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is dangerous — and especially so for those who have not been vaccinated against the disease, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday.

The WHO said the global surge in cases was being driven by Omicron, which is more transmissible than the previously dominant Delta variant.

More than 15 million cases were reported to the WHO last week — with millions more cases thought to have gone unrecorded.

But the UN health agency insisted there should be no surrender to the variant, dismissing the notion that it could be a welcome conduit to ending the pandemic.

“While Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, it remains a dangerous virus — particularly for those who are unvaccinated,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.

READ MORE: Omicron especially dangerous for unvaccinated – WHO

Additional reporting by AFP