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By IOL 
11h ago
Cape Town – The first of 2021 South Africa recorded 16,726 new cases of Covid-19 and 418 more deaths related to Covid-19, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Friday.
The cumulative number of Covid-19 cases in South Africa is now 1,073,887 and the total number of detected deaths has reached 28,887.
Eastern Cape reported 66 Covid-related deaths on Friday, Free State 8, Gauteng 66, KwaZulu-Natal 134, Mpumalanga 6, and Western Cape 138.
The accumulated total of tests carried out to date is 6 659 318 with 50 110 tests carried out in the last 24 hours.
Mkhize said that the 16,726 new cases represent a positivity rate of 33.4%.
Total recoveries are 887,701, representing a recovery rate of 82.6%.
South Africa currently has the 17th most confirmed coronavirus case in the world.
According to the Johns Hopkins University real-time count, the United States has recorded more than 20 million cases of Covid-19.
So far, the United States has recorded 20,007,149 cases and 346,408 deaths in the pandemic, the Baltimore-based university said, making it the country with the highest official number of cases and the highest death toll.
The UK has recorded more than 50,000 new cases of the virus daily over the past four days.
Both Great Britain and South Africa are currently facing a second wave of Covid-19 cases, as new variants of the coronavirus have been discovered in both countries.
IOL, Reuters, AFP
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