As of Saturday, South Africa has recorded a total of 2.595,447 positive cases of Covid-19, with 13,021 new cases identified since the last report, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, has announced.
This increase, according to the NICD, represents a 21.6 positivity rate.
The country has also recorded 238 Covid-19 related deaths, bringing total fatalities to 76,869 to date.
15.547,415 tests have been conducted in both the public and private sectors.
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The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape (24%), KwaZulu-Natal (26%). Gauteng Province accounted for 14%; Eastern Cape accounted for 10%; Free State 5 % and Mpumalanga accounted for 7% respectively; North West accounted for 5; Northern Cape accounted for 4%, and Limpopo province accounted for 3% of today’s new cases.
There has been an increase of 378 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
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The Democratic Republic of Congo receives a batch of more than 50,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the United Kingdom, after 35 days of having no supplies, the health ministry announces.
Protesters opposing a health pass championed by President Emmanuel Macron to defeat Covid-19 mass across France for the fifth successive weekend, but official figures suggest the numbers are down on last week.
The coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 4,347,979 people worldwide since the virus first emerged in late 2019, according to an AFP compilation of official data.
The US is the worst-affected country with 621,060 deaths, followed by Brazil with 567,862, India with 430,732, Mexico with 247,414 and Peru with 197,279.
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