More than 5 855 people tested positive for the Covid-19 in South Africa on Friday, as 281 more died from the virus, but the Health Department said the virus was showing signs of a ’sustained downward trend’
JOHANNESBURG: More than 5 855 people tested positive for Covid-19 in South Africa on Friday, as 281 more died from the virus, but the Health Department said the virus was showing signs of a “sustained downward trend”.
More than 2.8 million people have tested positive for the virus in SA to date, including the 5 885 new infections confirmed on Friday.
“This increase represents a 10.3% positivity rate,” said National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) spokesperson Sinenhlanhla Jimoh.
“As per the National Department of Health, a further 281 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 84 608 to date.
“About 16 987 426 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” she added.
The NICD said there were a further 330 new hospital admissions, taking the number of people hospitalised to 10 726, across the country.
In terms of the spread of the virus across the country, KZN, the Western Cape, and the Eastern Cape were the top three provinces, with the highest proportion of infections.
“The majority of new cases today are from KwaZulu-Natal (23%), followed by Western Cape (22%). Eastern Cape accounted for 16%, Free State accounted for 11%, Gauteng Province accounted for 9%, North West accounted for 7%, Northern Cape accounted for 6%, Mpumalanga accounted for 4%, and Limpopo accounted for 2% of today’s new cases,” said Jimoh.
Earlier this week, NICD acting director Professor Adrian Puren said the Gauteng and Limpopo provinces were officially out of the third wave, while all provinces were seeing a decline in new cases.
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