Cape Town - The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has identified 1 151 new infections across South Africa on Monday.
“Today the institute reports 1 151 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 659 698,” the NICD said.
Gauteng contributed the majority of new infections on Monday, followed by the North West, and then the Western Cape. This breaks the pattern of South Africa’s top three provinces where the bulk of the infections are normally identified on a daily basis - Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The relatively low infection numbers can be attributed to South Africa’s tradition of low testing turnout on Mondays.
A total of 15 604 tests were conducted, that represents a positivity rate of 7.4% when the number of new infections are considered.
“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 137 deaths and of these, 7 occurred in the past 24 to 48 hours,” the institute said.
An increase of 42 admissions at the country’s hospitals occurred in the last 24 hours. However the number of currently admitted patients has dropped from Friday (3 450) to Monday (3 175).
Meanwhile the number of vaccines administered has increased. On Sunday only 6 111 vaccines were administered in South Africa, compared to 68 952 on Monday.
Breakdown of SA’s new cases per province:
- Gauteng: 459
- North West: 198
- Western Cape: 191
- KwaZulu-Natal: 107
- Mpumalanga: 82
- Free State: 49
- Eastern Cape: 26
- Limpopo: 25
- Northern Cape: 14
IOL