South Africa has recorded a further 753 deaths due to complications related to the Coronavirus, which takes the death toll to 42 550 since the outbreak.
KwaZulu-Natal reported the highest number of recent fatalities at 261. The province is followed by Limpopo, which recorded 219 patients who died due to COVID-19.
However, according to Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, the province’s spike in deaths is due to its continued audits of fatalities in hospitals and updating the statistics.
The Minister said 102 people died in the Western Cape, 75 in Gauteng, 50 in the North West, 17 in Free State, 16 in Mpumalanga, seven in the Northern Cape and six in the Eastern Cape.
Meanwhile, South Africa logged 7 070 new COVID-19 cases, which represents a 14% positivity rate.
According to Mkhize, this brings the total number of infections to 1 430 648 since the last case was reported in March last year.
In addition, 49 065 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, which pushes the overall figure to over 8 million.
“Our recoveries now stand at 1 263 476, representing a recovery rate of 88.3%.”
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are 99 864 391 confirmed global cases of COVID-19, including 2 149 700 deaths.
Global view
The WHO said 4.1 million new cases were reported in the past week, a decline of 15% from the previous week and the second week of decline after global case incidence peaked in the first week of January 2021.
“This downward trend is largely attributed to relative reductions in case incidence in several countries that have contributed the highest numbers in recent months, but hides continued upward trends in other countries in the same regions.”
Meanwhile, the agency said the ongoing and prolonged high rates of new infections continues to strain health systems in many countries around the world.
“All regions reported a decline in new cases except the Western Pacific region which reported a similar incidence to last week.”
In addition, the largest decrease in new cases was reported in the European region by 20% followed by the African region, which went down by 16%.
“The Americas and Europe reported 86% of all new cases globally in the past week,” WHO said, adding that around 96 000 deaths have been reported.
“The Americas and Eastern Mediterranean region reported an increase in new deaths by 4% and 3% respectively, whereas Europe, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions showed a decrease in new deaths compared to last week.”
The WHO said no change in new deaths was seen in Africa.
In the past week, the five countries reporting the highest number of new cases continue to be the United States (1 259 902 cases, 20% decrease), Brazil (360 428 cases, 5% decrease), the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (260 098 cases, 24% decrease), Russia (151 191 cases, 9% decrease) and France (138 288 cases, 10% increase).
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