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SA had its deadliest day since the country’s coronavirus outbreak, setting grim new records in terms of deaths and new cases.
Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize announced that 844 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, along with 21,832 cases. Of the deaths, 452 occurred in the Eastern Cape alone, as a result of “data reconciliation”.
The previous high of deaths in a single day was 572 on July 22, and the previous daily high of cases was 18,000 infections recorded exactly one week ago on December 31.
In total, 31,368 Covid-19-related deaths have been recorded and 1,149,591 total infections have been confirmed. The new cases come from 70,060 tests, with a positivity rate of 31.1%.
Of the recently recorded deaths, 452 occurred in the Eastern Cape, 149 in the Western Cape, 65 in KwaZulu-Natal, 46 in the Northwest, 12 in the Free State, 11 in Limpopo, eight in Mpumalanga and five in the North Cape. .
Explaining the massive increase in deaths in the Eastern Cape, Mkhize said it was “the result of reconciliation of data between May and November 2020.”
“This includes the analysis of community cases in which post-mortem swabs were taken for Covid tests and the analysis of clinical records where the diagnosis was not confirmed at the time of death. The national health department is contracting with the province to investigate the details of the arrears report, “he said.
Overall, there are now 188,984 active cases across the country. Most of them are in KZN (76,993), followed by Western Cape (41,356) and Gauteng (35,727).
To date, 929,239 recoveries have been registered at a recovery rate of 80.8%.
TimesLIVE
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