Rustenburg - More than 5 000 new Covid-19 infection cases were reported in South Africa on Tuesday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.
"Today [Tuesday] the institute reports 5 062 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 769 927.
“This increase represents an 18.4% positivity rate. Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health [NDoH], there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported.
“Today, the NDoH reports 15 deaths and of these, 6 occurred in the past 24-48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 100 348 to date," the institute said.
The majority of new cases were from Gauteng with 2 307 cases or 46% of the new infection, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 1 448 or 29%.
“The Western Cape accounted for 571 (11%), Free State for 206 cases, the Eastern Cape with198, Limpopo (93), Mpumalanga (100), the North West (112) and the Northern Cape accounted for 27 of the new cases.
The institute said 27 482 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours, and 83 people were admitted in hospital in the reporting period.
According to the institute, the proportion of positive new cases/total newly tested on Tuesday was 18.4%, and was lower than Monday (19.3%). The 7-day average was 16.9% on Tuesday, higher than on Monday (15.7%)- IOL