SA hits 3.5-million confirmed Covid-19 cases after 9,860 recorded in 24 hours

SA passed the 3.5-million mark for confirmed Covid-19 cases, latest data from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) showed.

According to the NICD, there were 9,860 new Covid-19 cases recorded in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of confirmed infections to 3,504,554.

The first Covid-19 case recorded in SA was on March 5 2020.

However, there were more than 550 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours — though the health department described this as being because of backlogged data.

“The department of health has today recorded over 500 Covid-19 deaths due to [an] audit exercise conducted by provinces across the country to address a backlog of Covid-19 mortality and new cases.

“Out of 551 deaths recorded today, only 45 have occurred in the past 48 hours. Provinces like the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal account for 476 historical combined deaths in patients with documented Sars-CoV-2 infection.

“The identification of these historic deaths is part of the process to align the provincial death line list with excess deaths,” the department said.

This means that the total confirmed fatalities is 92,112 to date.

The NICD said on Thursday that, of the new cases, the most were in the Western Cape (2,632), followed by Gauteng (2,123) and KwaZulu-Natal (2,036). The Eastern Cape (1,079) was the only other province to pass the 1,000 mark, while no other province recorded more than 500 cases in the past day.

There were also 419 new hospital admissions in the past day, taking the total number of people now in hospital for Covid-19 treatment to 9,603.

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