SA records 517 new Covid-19 cases and 56 deaths

As of Friday, South Africa has recorded a total of 2.918,883 positive cases of Covid-19, with 517 cases identified in the past 24 hours.

This increase represents a 1.7% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases today are from KwaZulu-Natal (24%), followed by Free State and Western Cape (17% each). Gauteng Province accounted for 13%; Eastern Cape accounted for 8%; North West and Mpumalanga each accounted for 7%; and Limpopo accounted for 1% of today’s new cases, announced the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service.

As per the National Department of Health, a further 56 Covid-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 88,891 to date.

 18.314,612  tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

There has been an increase of 32 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

– Over 4.9 million dead –

The coronavirus has killed at least 4,926,579 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP on Friday. 

The US has suffered the most Covid-related deaths with 733,218, followed by Brazil with 604,679, India 453,042, Mexico 285,669 and Russia 228,453.

The countries with the most new deaths were the US with 1,812, followed by Russia with 1,064 and Ukraine with 614.

Taking into account excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, the World Health Organization estimates the overall death toll could be two to three times higher.

Additional reporting by AFP