At least 228 million cases of Covid-19 identified worldwide

At least 228,494,810 cases of coronavirus have been registered. The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

“The current surge in Covid-19 infections seems to be showing signs of a sustained downward trend,” said the institute.

According to the NICD, 1,504 new Covid-19 cases have been identified since the last report, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2.884,134.

This increase represents a 7.0% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases today are from KwaZulu-Natal (26%), followed by Northern Cape (22%). Free State accounted for 14%; Eastern Cape accounted for 12%; Western Cape accounted for 10%; Gauteng Province accounted for 8%; North West accounted for 4%; Mpumalanga accounted for 3%; and Limpopo accounted for 1% of today’s new cases.

South Africa has recorded 86,216 Covid-19 related deaths to date, with 42 reported to have died in the last 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has announced.

There has been an increase of 112 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

Coronavirus toll as of Monday

Covid-19 has killed at least 4.689,140 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP on Monday.

The figures are based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country.

They exclude revisions made by other statistical organisations, which show that the number of deaths is much higher.

The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic’s overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19.

A large number of the less severe or asymptomatic cases also remain undetected, despite intensified testing in many countries.

On Sunday, 5,440 new deaths and 363,125 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Russia with 778 new deaths, followed by Malaysia with 376 and Iran with 344.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 673,765 deaths from 42,087,485 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 590,752 deaths from 21,239,783 cases, India with 445,133 deaths from 33,478,419 cases, Mexico with 271,503 deaths from 3,569,677 cases, and Peru with 199,066 deaths from 2,167,008 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 604 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 312, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 311, Republic of North Macedonia with 310, Montenegro with 294, and Bulgaria with 288.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,473,165 deaths from 44,422,489 cases, Europe 1,288,262 deaths from 66,114,152 infections, and Asia 824,079 deaths from 52,888,412 cases.

The United States and Canada has reported 701,160 deaths from 43,660,830 cases, Africa 206,042 deaths from 8,163,881 cases, Middle East 194,473 deaths from 13,087,178 cases, and Oceania 1,959 deaths from 157,871 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