Nearly 300 new deaths recorded as SA reports lowest daily rise in cases since end of June

South Africa has recorded its lowest daily number of new Covid-19 infections in nearly a month, with the health ministry announcing 7,120 cases on Monday night.

This is the lowest number of new cases in a 24-hour period since June 30, when 6,945 new infections were confirmed. The last time SA recorded fewer than 8,700 new cases was on July 1, when 8,124 infections were reported.

However, the figures are based on a lower-than-usual number of tests: 28,433 tests in the 24-hour period under assessment. There have been 2,802,211 tests completed to date.

The figures announced on Monday mean there have now been 452,529 cases across SA since the start of the pandemic.

The health ministry also announced 298 new deaths, of which 91 from the Free State, 77 from the Eastern Cape, 61 from Gauteng, 36 from Western Cape, 13 from Mpumalanga, 11 from North West and nine from KwaZulu-Natal.

"This brings the cumulative number of deaths to 7,067," the ministry said.

Of the new cases, nearly 2,200 were recorded in Gauteng and just under 2,000 were recorded in KZN. The third biggest jump in cases was in the Free State, where more than 700 cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours.

Of the total number of cases, most are in Gauteng (162,319), followed by the Western Cape (92,600), the Eastern Cape (74,231) and KwaZulu-Natal (65,982).

The North West is on 17,604 confirmed cases, followed by the Free State (7,222), Mpumalanga (11,386), Limpopo (7,260) and the Northern Cape (3,875).

Fifty cases have not been allocated.

In the public interest, most of our coronavirus news isn’t behind our paywall, and is free to read. To support our mission of delivering award-winning, independent local news, subscribe from as little as R45 per month by clicking here.