Covid-19 update: SA records 429 new cases and 39 deaths

As of Monday, South Africa has recorded a total of 2.906,851 positive cases of Covid-19 since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, with only 429 new cases identified since the last report.

According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), this increase represents a 2.6% positivity rate.

The country has also recorded 39 Covid-19 related deaths, bringing total fatalities to 87,819 to date.

17.800,434 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 4,798,207 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Monday.

At least 234,850,860 cases of coronavirus have been registered.

The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

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, 4,232 new deaths and 299,253 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Russia with 883 new deaths, followed by United States with 246 and Iran with 229.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 701,176 deaths from 43,683,179 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 597,948 deaths from 21,468,121 cases, India with 448,997 deaths from 33,834,702 cases, Mexico with 278,801 deaths from 3,681,960 cases, and Russia with 210,801 deaths from 7,612,317 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 605 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina with 324, Republic of North Macedonia with 322, Hungary with 313, Montenegro with 308, and Bulgaria with 302.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,493,343 deaths from 45,066,619 cases, Europe 1,318,289 deaths from 68,312,653 infections, and Asia 843,800 deaths from 54,210,342 cases.

The United States and Canada has reported 729,124 deaths from 45,315,472 cases, Africa 211,357 deaths from 8,318,366 cases, Middle East 200,066 deaths from 13,439,750 cases, and Oceania 2,228 deaths from 187,658 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