Cape Town – South Africa’s confirmed Covid-19 cases now stand at 702 131, with 18 408 deaths reported since the coronavirus hit the country in March, the health ministry confirmed on Saturday.
Over the past 24 hours, 1 928 new cases have been identified.
Globally, Covid-19 cases reached a record high of 400 000 cases reported in a single day on Friday as most European countries experience a second wave of infections.
Provincial overview
With 224 863 cases, Gauteng accounts for 32 percent of the national total, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 121 174 cases or 17.3 percent.
The Western Cape has the third highest number of cases at 11 4181 or 16.3 percent.
Gauteng and the Western Cape have recorded the highest number of Covid-19 fatalities with 4 618 and 4 280 respectively.
Testing data
“The cumulative number of tests conducted to date is 4 528 141 with 22 608 new tests conducted since the last report,” the ministry said on Saturday.
Deaths and recoveries
Of the 38 Covid-19 related deaths reported over the past 24 hours, 10 were from the Eastern Cape, 10 from the Free State, 17 from Gauteng and 1 from Mpumalanga.
As of Saturday, 630 436 people have recovered from Covid-19, keeping the recovery rate at a steady 90 percent.
Epidemiology
In the past week, the Free State reported the highest number of new cases (2 139/9 634, 22.2%), followed by Gauteng (1 895/9 634, 19.7%), and Western Cape (1 402/9 634, 14.6%), according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
As of 10 October 2020, a total of 692 471 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases, including 17 780 deaths (case fatality ratio 2.6%), had been detected in South Africa. Of these, 9 634 were cases detected in that week, representing a 7.2% decrease in number of new cases compared to the previous week (10 377), the NICD said.
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