By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) says a technical glitch led to delayed reporting of the Covid-19 test results on Sunday evening.
On Sunday, the NICD initially reported 18 035 new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, but the total had actually increased to more than 37 000 to account for the positive tests not previously reported. The glitch meant the numbers weren’t counted properly.
The NICD explained on Monday: “The technical challenges, which coincided with IT security upgrades, affected NHLS daily production and led to Covid-19 test results delay,” it said in a statement on Monday.
It added its engineers, together with service providers, identified the problem and managed to fully restore the service in the early hours of Thursday morning.
“We are monitoring the system very closely while ensuring that such bottlenecks do not occur,” it said.
It added some Covid-19 surveillance data may take longer to reflect on the national list.
South African health authorities said on Sunday the spread of Covid-19 and the new variant Omicron had slowed, while experts were positive about the relatively low rate of hospitalisations.