SA records 5,096 new cases of Covid-19 and 41 deaths

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, has reported 5,096 new cases of Covid-19 that have been identified in South Africa in the past 24 hours.

This brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3.899,841. This increase represents a 20.9% positivity rate.

24.927,476 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors. The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (36%) followed by KwaZulu-Natal (19%) . Western Cape accounted for 18%; Eastern Cape accounted for 11% and Free State accounted for 7%;. Mpumalanga, North West & Northern Cape each accounted for 3% respectively, and Limpopo accounted for 1% of today’s cases.

The country has also reported 41 deaths, and of these, 12 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 100,812 to date.

There has been an increase of 195 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

School closures during the pandemic have set back children’s learning in many G20 countries and could have a long-lasting negative impact on GDP in advanced economies, the IMF said Tuesday.

Recent assessments of schoolchildren show that widespread virtual learning during the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in lower academic levels in India, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil and the United States, where many institutions were closed for more than a year.

“If these learning losses aren’t addressed, affected students could experience a lifetime of depressed earnings,” the Washington-based crisis lender said in a report.

IMF economists observed that current students will make up nearly 40 percent of the working-age population in G20 economies for decades to come.

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“While much is still unknown, our simulations show that, once all such students are in the labor market, gross domestic product for advanced G20 economies could be as much as three percent lower in the long run,” the report warned.

Poorest households suffered the worst learning losses, and their prospects stand to be “particularly diminished, further widening income inequality,” the IMF said.

If learning loss from the pandemic goes unaddressed, it could result in lifetime income losses of 1.5 to 10 percent for residents of G20 nations, the IMF estimates.

Additional reporting by AFP