By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), reports 2,334 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,662,032.
The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (39%), followed by Kwa-Zulu Natal and Western Cape, each accounting for 15% respectively. North West accounted for 8%; Mpumalanga accounted for 7%; Eastern Cape and Free State each accounted for 5% respectively. Limpopo accounted for 3% and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
This increase represents a 7.3% positivity rate.
The proportion of positive new cases/total new tested today is 7.3%, which is lower than yesterday (7.4%). The 7-day average is 8.0% today, which is lower than yesterday (8.1%).
Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of COVID-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDoH reports 64 deaths and of these, 1 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 98,868 to date
22,928,257 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors as per the table below.
| Sector | Total tested | New tested | ||
| Private | 12,439,144 | 54.3% | 17,631 | 55.5% |
| Public | 10,489,113 | 45.7% | 14,143 | 44.5% |
| Total | 22,928,257 | 100.0% | 31,774 | 100.0% |
There has been an increase of 73 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours. The following table is a summary of reported COVID-19 admissions by sector.
| Sector | Facilities Reporting | Admissions to Date |
Died to Date | Currently Admitted |
| Private | 259 | 228,959 | 39,093 | 1,466 |
| Public | 407 | 276,078 | 61,954 | 1,675 |
| TOTAL | 666 | 505,037 | 101,047 | 3,141 |
The BA.2 variant of the Omicron Covid-19 strain is not more severe than the original, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Based on a sample of people from various countries, “we are not seeing a difference in severity of BA.1 compared to BA.2, “Maria Van Kerkhove, a senior WHO official, said in an online question and answer session.
“So this is a similar level of severity as it relates to risk of hospitalisation. And this is really important, because in many countries, they’ve had a substantial amount of circulation, both of BA.1 and BA.2,” she said.
Van Kerkhove, who leads the technical side of the WHO’s Covid-19 response team, was reporting the findings of a committee of experts tracking the evolution of the virus.
Their conclusions will come as a relief to countries such as Denmark, where the BA.2 variant of Omicron has circulated widely.