Johannesburg - Forty more people have succumbed to the coronavirus in South Africa, the Department of Health said on Thursday, while 947 more people were newly infected with the virus.
The latest deaths take South Africa’s death toll due to the coronavirus pandemic to 88 506 since last year.
This as the latest confirmed infections take the number of confirmed Covid-19 infections in the country to over 2.9 million since the first case was detected in March last year.
National Institute for Communicable Diseases spokesperson Sinenhlanhla Jimoh said the majority of new cases were from KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng.
The new cases are from KwaZulu-Natal (25%), followed by the Western Cape (20%), Gauteng (14%), the Northern Cape (12%), the Free State (11%), the Eastern Cape (8%), the North West (6%), Mpumalanga (4%) and Limpopo (1%), she said.
Jimoh said 18 million Covid-19 tests had been conducted in the public and private sector since last year.
She added: “Today the institute reports 947 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 914 827.
“This increase represents a 2.7% positivity rate. As per the National Department of Health, a further 40 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 88 506 to date.”
Jimoh said 84 people were admitted to hospitals due to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of people hospitalised due to the virus to 5 149 in the public and private medical facilities currently.
Meanwhile, over 215 000 jabs were administered against the virus in the past 24 hours, the Department of Health said, taking the total vaccination jabs to 19.8 million.
Gauteng has conducted the most jabs with 5.2 million, followed by the Western Cape with 3.2 million and KZN with 3.1 million.
IOL