South Africa daily Covid-19 infections exceed 3,000 raising a red flag

South Africa breached the 3,000 mark for new Covid-19 infections over 24 hours on Friday — raising concerns for health minister Zweli Mkhize.

“Today, we report with concern that the new cases identified in the past 24 hours are 3,105. This gives a cumulative total of Covid-19 cases in SA to be 762,763,” said a statement issued by the health ministry.

“We wish to highlight that we have breached the 3,000 mark for daily new cases. Of these new cases, more than half (54.4%) are from the Eastern Cape.”

Of additional concern was that the positivity rate was at 12%, higher than the ideal of 10% or less.

An additional 88 Covid-19 related deaths were recorded and of those 67 were in the Eastern Cape.

“This brings the total to 20,759 deaths. We have noted that the number of new deaths being reported daily in the Eastern Cape is rising as well,” said the statement.

The cumulative number of tests conducted is now 5,243,055 with 29,019 new tests  conducted since the last report on Thursday.

There have been 707,040 recoveries translating into a recovery rate of 92,7% in SA.

TimesLIVE