Covid-19 update: SA records 1,481 new cases and 5 fatalities

As of Thursday, 7 April, the cumulative number of detected Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 3,728,689  with 1,481 new cases identified, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed.

This represents a 5.8% positivity rate.

Five Covid-19 related deaths was reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 100,075.

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There were 55 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

The total number of recoveries stands at 3,615,531 with a recovery rate of 97%. South Africa currently has 13,083 active cases.

23,996,380 tests in total have been conducted to date in both public and private sectors.

Provincial breakdown

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (40%), followed by Western Cape (23%).

Kwa-Zulu Natal accounted for 21%; Eastern Cape accounted for 6%; Free State & Mpumalanga each accounted for 3%; North West accounted for 2%; Limpopo & Northern Cape each accounted for 1%  of today’s new cases.

More than two-thirds of Africans may have contracted Covid-19 over the past two years, around 97 times more than reported infections, a World Health Organization report suggested on Thursday.

Laboratory tests have detected 11.5 million Covid cases and 252,000 fatalities across the African continent.

But the WHO Africa region said its study – which is still being peer-reviewed – suggests the officially confirmed numbers were “likely only scratching the surface of the real extent of coronavirus infections in Africa”.

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“A new meta-analysis of standardised sero-prevalence study revealed that the true number of infections could be as much as 97 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases,” said WHO Africa boss Matshidiso Moeti.

“This suggests that more than two-thirds of all Africans have been exposed to the Covid-19 virus,” she added.

Additional reporting by AFP