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By IOL Reporter 
6h ago
Cape Town – The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa has risen by 5,297 in the past 24 hours, and 318 more deaths have been recorded during the same period, according to Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.
The cumulative number of Covid-19 cases in the country now stands at 1,449,236 and the death toll at 43,951.
With 26.8 percent of the total number of positive cases, Gauteng remains the province most affected by the virus since the start of the pandemic last year.
KwaZulu-Natal has the second highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, accounting for 21.6 percent of the country’s overall cases.
The North Cape has so far registered the lowest number of Covid-19 cases, 31,851, representing 2.2 percent of the national total.
Tests
“The cumulative total of tests conducted to date is 8,245,124 with 41,540 new tests recorded since the last report,” Mkhize said on Saturday.
Deaths and recoveries
Of the 318 deaths recorded on Saturday, 112 were from KwaZulu-Natal, 85 from the Eastern Cape, 58 from Gauteng, 44 from the Western Cape, 15 from Mpumalanga, 6 from North West and 3 from Northern Cape.
The number of patients who have now recovered is 1,292,921, representing a recovery rate of 89 percent.
Doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines
As South Africa awaits the delivery of its first batch of vaccines, there is growing international concern that the 501Y.V2 variant of the disease significantly reduces the effectiveness of life-saving drugs.
On Friday, Johnson & Johnson said its vaccine was 66 percent effective overall in preventing people from contracting multiple variants of Covid-19.
The company was reacting to the results of a global vaccine study that showed that the level of protection offered by vaccines varied significantly across the three continents where large-scale trials are being conducted.
Results from half the trial put the effectiveness of vaccines in South Africa at just 57 percent.
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