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By IOL Reporter 
5h ago
Cape Town – As of today, the cumulative number of Covid-19 cases identified in South Africa stands at 1,278,303, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Wednesday.
Mkhize did not stipulate how many new infections have been recorded in a statement, but this means that 18,555 new cases have been identified since the last report. A total of 13,105 new cases were reported on Tuesday, after 15,046 new cases on Monday and 17,421 on Sunday, following a peak of 21,862 last Friday.
A total of 806 new Covid-19-related deaths have been recorded (755 people reported to have died on Tuesday): Eastern Cape 150, Free State 24, Gauteng 211, KwaZulu-Natal 235, Limpopo 14, Mpumalanga 14, Northern Cape 7 and Western Cape 151. This brings the total number of deaths to 35,140.
The number of recoveries now stands at 1,030,930, representing a recovery rate of 80.6%. The cumulative total of tests performed to date is 7,358,741, with 71,681 new tests performed since the last report.
The first week of 2021 produced a record number of deaths in the country, the Medical Research Council (MRC) said on Wednesday.
The previous week’s total of 16,532, a record in itself, was surpassed by 20,063 deaths, according to the MRC’s weekly report on excess deaths. These are deaths that exceed the number predicted according to the trends of the last two years.
During the week of December 30 to January 5, the 10,907 deaths from natural causes exceeded the predicted figure by 131%, the MRC said.
In the same week, deaths officially recorded as due to Covid-19 totaled just 2,491, but since an excess of deaths was first noted in the Western Cape on May 6, 2020, they have consistently exceeded official Covid deaths. -19.
Deaths from natural causes increased in all provinces in the first week of the year, but the MRC said strong increases were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Cape government has expressed concern that it may encounter problems with the distribution of vaccines to remote areas of the province.
The acting head of the provincial health department, Dr. Sibongile Zungu, said that they were considering using schools as vaccination sites because a large proportion of the province’s population cannot access health care facilities within a radius of 5 km from where they live.
Zungu told the parliament’s health portfolio committee on Wednesday that of the 24,494 communities in South Africa, the inhabitants of 6,328 of them had to travel more than 5 km to reach a health center to be vaccinated. He said 2,873, or 45%, of these communities were in the Eastern Cape.
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