Cape Town – South Africa recorded 5 450 new coronavirus cases and 97 Covid-19 related deaths on Saturday, the National Health Department said.
The cumulative total of tests conducted to date was 11 840 773 with 40 460 new tests recorded since the last report on Friday.
On Saturday, 97 new Covid-19 deaths were reported. The department said 21 of the deaths were in Free State, 41 in Gauteng, five in KwaZulu-Natal, three in Mpumalanga, 15 in Northern Cape, and 12 in Western Cape.
This brought the total number of deaths in the country to 56 929.
“We convey our condolences to the loved ones of the departed and thank the health care workers who treated the deceased patients,” the department said.
The department said the country’s recoveries stood at 1 574 223, which translated to a recovery rate of 93.2%.
An interactive live dashboard is in its final stages of being developed and will go live in due course on all digital platforms – it will undergo various iterations before the final product, however all essential data will be available, the department said.
Meanwhile the following static PDF will be posted daily on the website and can also be found on https://sacoronavirus.co.za/latest-vaccine-statistics/
The updated list of sites that are reporting vaccinations to the EVDS can be found at the following link: https://sacoronavirus.co.za/active-vaccination-sites/
Earlier in the week, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) Executive Director, Professor Adrian Puren said the country was technically in a third wave and said the country needed to increase testing.
Speaking on SABC’s Morning Live, Puren said the situation in the country could be described as a third wave as the whole country had reached the threshold.
“The overall positivity is at 12.7% nationally, but if you could allocate it by province the positive rate could be higher,” he said at the time.
“In Gauteng it’s about 17 %, Free State is about 15%, Northern Cape 23%, North West 18%. So that really means we should really enhance our testing and identity cases in order to get a better sense of the current outbreak in South Africa.”