By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), reports 3,342 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,601,630.
The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (31%), followed by Western Cape (15%). Limpopo accounted for 13%; Kwa-Zulu Natal accounted for 11%; Mpumalanga accounted for 10%; Free State accounted for 7%; North West accounted for 6%; Eastern Cape accounted for 4%; and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
This increase represents a 10.1% positivity rate.
The proportion of positive new cases/total new tested today is 10.1%, which is lower than yesterday (10.6%). The 7-day average is 9.6% today, and is higher than yesterday (9.4%).
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 121 deaths and of these, 12 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 94,905 to date.
There has been an increase of 63 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours and for updates on the national vaccine programme, click here.
Globally, as of 27 January 2022, there have been 360 578 392 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5 620 865 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation.
The US has recorded the most Covid deaths with 882,881, followed by Brazil with 625,884 and India on 493,198.
Taking into account excess mortality linked to Covid-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates the overall death toll could be two to three times higher.