CAPE TOWN – Gauteng continues to be the epicentre of newly reported Covid-19 cases as the country records 2 828 new Covid-19 cases, 12 deaths on Friday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.
This after a new variant to has been discovered.
This week, medical experts detected a group of related SARS-CoV-2 viruses in South Africa named the B.1.1.529 lineage. B.1.1.529 has been detected in Gauteng at relatively high frequency, with >70 percent of genomes sequenced from specimens collected between 14-23 November 2021 belonging to this lineage.
This lineage possesses a high number of mutations previously seen in other Sars-CoV-2 variants of interest or variants of concern but also other mutations which are novel.
The NICD said currently, no unusual symptoms have been reported following infection with the B.1.1.529 variant, and as with other variants, some individuals are asymptomatic.
“Today the institute reports 2 828 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 955 328.
“This increase represents a 9.1 percent positivity rate.
“As per the National Department of Health, a further 12 Covid-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 89 783 to date.
“A total of 19 348 954 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” the NICD said.
The organisation report reveals that Gauteng continues to dominate the infection numbers as it accounts for 77 percent of new cases, followed by the Western Cape accounting for 5 percent of cases.
KwaZulu-Natal and the North West provinces each accounted for 4 percent of new cases respectively while Limpopo and Mpumalanga accounted for 3 percent of Friday’s new cases respectively.
The Free State accounted for 2 percent of new cases and the Eastern Cape and Northern cape provinces only accounted for 1 percent of the day’s new cases.
The NICD said the proportion of positive new cases/total new tests today (Friday) is 9.2 percent which is higher than that which was recorded on Thursday (6.5 percent).
In the past 24 hours, the NICD also reported there had been 60 new hospital admissions.