A total of 46 893 COVID-19 tests were conducted on Tuesday, with 11 093 new cases detected.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), this represents a 23.7% positivity rate, pushing the number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 1 843 572.
Of the latest infections, the majority are from Gauteng (67%), followed by the Western Cape (8%).
Meanwhile, a further 297 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing the death toll to 59 092.
The NICD reported an increase of 575 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
This means there are currently 10 114 people who are receiving COVID-19 treatment in hospitals.
Global view
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are now 178 503 429 confirmed global cases, 3 872 457 deaths and 2 414 347 324 administered vaccine doses.
The WHO said the global numbers of cases and deaths continued to decrease over the past week, with over 2.5 million new weekly infections and over 64 000 deaths.
This represents a 6% and a 12% decrease respectively, compared to the previous week.
“While the number of cases reported globally now exceeds 177 million, last week saw the lowest weekly case incidence since February 2021.”
The organisation said this week, the Americas and Western Pacific regions logged numbers of new weekly cases similar to the previous week.
Meanwhile, South-East Asia and the European regions reported a decline in the number of new infections.
In addition, Africa recorded a marked peak in the number of weekly cases as compared to the previous week.
“Globally, mortality remains high with more than 9 000 deaths reported each day over the past week,” said the WHO.
However, the number of new deaths reported in the past week decreased across all regions except for the Eastern Mediterranean and the African regions.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from Brazil (505 344 new cases, 11% increase), India (441 976 new cases, 30% decrease), Colombia (193 907 new cases, 10% increase), Argentina (149 673 new cases, 16% decrease), and Russia (108 139 new cases, 31% increase).
Meanwhile, variant Alpha has been reported in 170 countries, territories or areas, Beta in 119 countries, Gamma in 71 countries and Delta in 85 countries.