Covid-19: 221 deaths and 2,782 new cases recorded in SA in 24 hours

There were 221 Covid-19 related deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Friday.

However, the overwhelming majority of these were as a result of an “ongoing audit exercise” by the national health department, with just 14 of the deaths occurring in the past 24 to 48 hours.

The NICD also said there were 2,782 new Covid-19 infections recorded in the past day, taking the total number of confirmed infections to date to 3,618,853. There have been 95,766 confirmed deaths to date.

The majority of the new cases were recorded in Gauteng (916), followed by the Western Cape (467) and KwaZulu-Natal (352).

The NICD also reported that the number of people currently hospitalised for Covid-19 treatment had dropped below 5,000. There were 94 new admissions in the past day, taking the total number of admitted patients to 4,811.

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