CAPE TOWN - South Africa recorded 339 new Covid-19 cases and 44 deaths on Friday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has said.
“Today the institute reports 339 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 923 393. This increase represents a 1.1% positivity rate.
“As per the National Department of Health, a further 44 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 89 295 to date.
“A total of 18 670 029 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” the NICD said.
The organisation said the majority of Friday's cases were reported in Gauteng with 26% of cases, followed by the Western Cape with 19% and KZN at 14%.
The Free State accounted for 13% of the new cases, while the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape all accounted for 7% respectively.
The North West accounted for 6% and Limpopo accounted for 1% of new cases.
The NICD said the total number of new Covid-19 cases on Friday is 1.1% which is higher than that recorded onThursday (1%).
In the past 24 hours, the NICD also reported that there had been 41 new hospital admissions. This takes the number of people hospitalized to 3895 currently.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health said healthcare workers who participated in the Sisonke study would receive an SMS inviting them to participate in the Sisonke part 2 which entails frontline healthcare workers receiving a booster jab for their Johnson & Johnson vaccine which they received jabs for from February.
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