DURBAN - KWAZULU-NATAL has recorded a spike in Covid-19 cases and according to statistics from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, has contributed 26% to today's increase in Covid cases.
Dr Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said the increase of daily infections was expected as the province had been on an increase for several weeks.
“Infections are certainly on the rise in KwaZulu-Natal, as they are in other coastal provinces. The province’s epidemiological trajectory is about 3 to 5 weeks behind Gauteng, so the increase is expected but it's difficult to say if it's because of the looting and unrest, but certainly it has had an effect on what we are seeing,” said Suliman.
South Africa has a total of 2 554 240 confirmed Covid-19 cases with 7 502 new infections reported over the last 24 hours.
The NICD said this increase represents an 18.9% positivity rate.
The majority of new cases today are from KwaZulu-Natal (26%), followed by Western Cape (23%). Gauteng Province accounted for 17%; Eastern Cape accounted for 13%; Free State accounted for 6%; Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 5% respectively; Limpopo Province accounted for 3% and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
Meanwhile, a further 573 deaths have been reported taking the total number of Covid-related deaths to 75 774.
The total number of cases today (n=7 502) is higher than yesterday (n= 6 590) and lower than the average number of new cases per day over the 7 preceding days (n=10 098). The 7-day moving average daily number of cases has decreased.
There has been an increase of 459 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
The National Department of Health confirmed that the recovery rate now stands at 91.5% with just over nine million vaccines administered.
IOL