South Africa’s COVID-19 caseload has risen by 2 824 in the past 24 hours, with a positivity rate of 8.2%, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Tuesday.
This means the country now has a total number of 3 628 014 laboratory-confirmed cases since the outbreak.
Gauteng continues to account for the highest number of daily infections after 997 people have been confirmed to have contracted the virus.
The province is followed by 462 cases in KwaZulu-Natal, 425 in the Western Cape and 216 in Limpopo, while the rest of the provinces reported less than 100 cases.
In addition, there are 268 latest fatalities due to COVID-19, of which 20 were logged in the past 24 to 48 hours, pushing the official death toll to 96 289.
Meanwhile, data shows that the hospital admissions have increased by 101 to 4 502 since the last reporting cycle.
The Department of Health administered 65 499 COVID-19 vaccine doses, bringing the total to 30 325 638 to date.
According to the department, the country now has 16 637 053 fully jabbed adults, while 1 322 615 doses have been given to children from 12 to 17 years old.
The statistics also show that the country has now distributed 704 148 booster shots.
Globally, as of 8 February 2022, there have been 396 558 014 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5 745 032 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO)
Global view
According to the WHO, during the week of 31 January to 6 February 2022, the number of new COVID-19 cases decreased by 17% compared to the previous week.
On the other hand, deaths increased by 7%.
“Across the six WHO regions, over 19 million new cases and just under 68 000 new deaths were reported,” the agency’s weekly epidemiological update stated.
At the regional level, the WHO said the Eastern Mediterranean region reported a peak of 36% in the number of new weekly cases while all other regions reported decreases.
In addition, the number of new weekly deaths continued to increase in the South-East Asia (67%) and Eastern Mediterranean (45%), while the number remained similar to that of the previous week in the region of the Americas and Europe and decreased in the African (14%) and Western Pacific regions (5%).
The highest number of new cases were reported from the United States (1 874 006 new cases, 50% decrease), France (1 738 189 new cases, 26% decrease), Germany (1 285 375 new cases, 22% increase), Brazil (1 241 025 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures) and India (1 095 616 new cases, a 41% decrease).
The highest number of new deaths were reported from the United States (14 090 new deaths, 15% decrease), India (7 888 new deaths, 69% increase), Russia (4 686 new deaths, similar to the previous week’s figures), Brazil (4 610 new deaths, 39% increase) and Mexico (2 910 new deaths, 48% increase).
“The current global epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 is characterised by the continued rapid global spread of the Omicron variant,” the WHO said.
In addition, all other variants, including variants of concern t including Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta and variants of interest, Lambda and Mu continue to decline in all six WHO regions.
Source: South African Government News Agency