Cape Town – A total of 14 858 new Covid-19 cases have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 342 330.
This increase represents a 26.5% positivity rate, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Thursday.
According to the National Department of Health, a further 433 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported, bringing the total fatalities to 68 625 to date.
The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (34%), followed by the Western Cape (22%). KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 11% of the new cases; Limpopo and North West each for 8%; Mpumalanga for 6%; Eastern Cape for 5%; Free State for 4%; and the Northern Cape for 3%.
The total number of cases today (14 858) is lower than yesterday (16 240), but higher than the average number of new cases per day over the seven preceding days (12 727).
There has been an increase of 720 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, with 16 999 people now being treated in the country's public and private hospitals.
There were 238 020 vaccine doses administered in the past 24 hours, the second-highest single-day number of jabs after 257 492 on Wednesday.
A total of 14 425 215 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.
#COVID19 UPDATE: A total of 55,981 tests were conducted in the last 24 hrs, with 14,858 new cases, which represents a 26.5% positivity rate. A further 433 #COVID19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 68,625 to date. Read more: https://t.co/T36dLIfhex pic.twitter.com/68arHKTTJA
— NICD (@nicd_sa) July 22, 2021
The Western Cape has hit a plateau in its third wave, says the head of health in the province, Dr Keith Cloete, and the SA Covid-19 Modelling Consortium, which said there is a 73% probability that the Western Cape has passed its peak for this wave.
Speaking on Thursday, Cloete said: “Our third wave looks like a flattening in terms of the number of cases. However, if you look at oxygen use, hospitalisation and daily deaths, these are increasing.”
Cloete said the third wave had been “slightly lower than the second wave” and that the Delta variant remains dominant.
The province is seeing about 230 hospital admissions a day and there are now 3 010 people admitted to hospitals.
Africa, battling a severe third wave of Covid-19 infections, will start to receive the first batch of 400 million doses of vaccines from Johnson & Johnson next week, the AU's special envoy on Covid-19 said on Thursday.
Only about 60 million doses have been administered among a total population of 1.3 billion so far on the continent.
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