CAPE TOWN – South Africa recorded 136 new Covid-19 cases and five deaths on Monday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.
“Today the institute reports 136 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total laboratory-confirmed cases to 2,926,075. This increase represents a 0.9 percent positivity rate.
“As per the National Department of Health, a further five Covid-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 89,489 to date.
“A total of 18,933,156 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” the NICD said.
The organisation says the majority of new cases today are from Gauteng, which accounts for 43 percent of cases, followed by Western Cape, which accounts for 16 percent of new cases. KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 13 percent; Northern Cape and North West each accounted for 7 percent; Mpumalanga accounted for 6 percent; Eastern Cape accounted for 5 percent; Free State accounted for 4 percent of Monday’s new cases.
Fortunately, no new cases were reported in Limpopo province.
The NICD says the proportion of new cases/ total new tested cases on Monday is 0.9 percent lower than cases recorded on Sunday.
It said in the past 24 hours, there has been an increase of 18 hospital admissions.
According to the national department of health, a rise in Covid-19 infections is expected in the country around mid-December and early January and this could predict a potential fourth wave.
On Friday, health Minister Joe Phaahla said that the next wave arrival will be dependent on mainly two issues: people’s movement this festive season and the emergence of a new variant of concern could be a contributing factor to the fourth wave, however, he said the genomic surveillance team has not detected new variants of concern.
robin.francke@inl.co.za
IOL