By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), reports 463 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 996 904.
The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (44%) followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape (17% each). Eastern Cape accounted for 7%; Mpumalanga accounted for 6%; North West accounted for 3%, Free State accounted for 4%; Limpopo accounted for 1%; and Northern Cape accounted for less than 1% of today’s cases.
This increase represents a 4.5% positivity rate.
The proportion of positive new cases/total new tested today is (4,5%), and is lower than yesterday (4,8%). The 7-day average is (4,2%) today, and is higher than yesterday (4,0%). The 7-day moving average daily number of cases has increased.
Today, the NDoH reports 9 deaths, and of these, 2 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 101,868 to date.
Globally, the number of new weekly cases increased for the fourth consecutive week after a declining trend since the last peak in March 2022.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), during the week of 27 June to 3 July 2022, over 4.6 million cases were reported, a figure similar to that of the previous week.
At the regional level, the number of new weekly cases increased in the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, European and the Western Pacific regions, while the areas of Africa and the Americas recorded a drop.
Meanwhile, the number of new weekly deaths dropped by 12% compared to the previous week, with over 8 100 fatalities recorded.
At the country level, the WHO reported that the highest numbers of new weekly cases were logged in France (603 074), Germany (555 331), Italy (511 037), the United States (496 049) and Brazil (334 852).
In addition, as of 3 July 2022, over 546 million confirmed global cases and over 6.3 million deaths had been reported.