There have been seven Covid-19 deaths recorded in SA, health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said on Friday.

Speaking in Cape Town, he said there were 1,505 cases of Covid-19 recorded across the country, an increase of 43 from Thursday night.

Mkhize said the two new recorded deaths were an 80-year-old man and an 81-year-old woman in KwaZulu-Natal.

He said there were two more cases that were under investigation and, if confirmed, would take the country's official Covid-19 death to nine.

He said that 50,219 tests had been conducted.

Mkhize said there was a question over whether or not it was “worth the effort” to test people when more than 50,000 tests had revealed a relatively small 1,500 cases.

“It is worth the effort even if we test several million people but only find a couple of thousand cases ... because the devastation of a Covid-19 outbreak that is unmanaged and uncontrolled is far worse than the cost of testing many people.

“We need many more people being tested,” he said.