SA recorded just over 8,000 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Friday night.

The 8,021 new infections came at a positivity rate of 16.5%, and take the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases across SA to 1,730,106 since the outbreak of the coronavirus in SA in March last year.

“The majority of new cases today are from the Gauteng province (60%), followed by the Western Cape (9%) province,” the NICD said.

This translated to 4,809 cases in Gauteng and 748 in the Western Cape. The only other province to have more than 500 cases in the past 24 hours was the North West, with 508 confirmed infections.

The NICD said there was an increase of 1,009 hospital admissions, meaning that there are now 7,467 people in hospital across SA with Covid-19.

There were also 117 in-hospital deaths reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of in-hospital fatalities to 57,591.

TimesLIVE