SA records 16,585 Covid-19 cases and 333 deaths in 24 hours

SA recorded 333 new Covid-19 deaths and 16,585 infections in the past 24 hours, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Sunday.

While this is significantly lower than the 26,485 new infections announced on Saturday, the figures on Sunday came at a worrying positivity rate — the number of positive results against the number of tests taken in the same period — of 30.2%.

There were 54,879 tests taken into account for Sunday’s positive cases compared with  96,896 tests for the day before.

The NICD figures show there have now been 61,840 fatalities and 2,062,896 cumulative infections recorded to date.

Again, Gauteng accounted for the majority of new infections, with 9,443 cases (57% of the total) being recorded in the country’s virus epicentre.

The NICD added that there were 384 new hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, meaning 13,972 people are now being treated for Covid-19-related illnesses in the country’s hospitals.

TimesLIVE