The COVID-19 death toll has topped the 21 000 mark after 115 more people lost their lives on Tuesday.
Of the additional deaths, 45 were recorded in the Eastern Cape, 20 in Free State, 19 in Gauteng, 16 in the Western Cape, 10 in Kwa-Zulu-Natal and five in the Northern Cape.
This brings the total number of fatalities to 21 083 since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March.
Also, 2 493 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus, which brings the number of COVID-19 cases to 772 252 to date.
The Coronavirus continues to spread across the nation, with the Eastern Cape recording the most active actives.
According to the Health Minister’s latest statistics, the Eastern Cape has the highest number of active cases at 8 512, followed by the Western Cape 7 880 and Free State 7 280.
KwaZulu-Natal has 5 645 active cases, Northern Cape 3 269, North West 1 230, Mpumalanga 373, Limpopo 373 and Gauteng 243.
Meanwhile, 716 444 patients have been healed which translates to a recovery rate of 92.8%.
“The cumulative number of tests conducted to date is 5 325 631 with 20 288 new tests conducted since the last report,” said Minister Zweli Mkhize.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is reporting 58 900 547 global confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1 393 305 deaths.
Global view
According to WHO, the "rapid acceleration" of COVID-19 cases have slowed down, with about 4 million new cases reported in the past week.
However, not the same can be said about the death rate, which continued to surge, with over 67 000 new additional fatalities recorded.
“The European and South East Asia regions continued downward trends in weekly cases; however, the European Region remains the largest contributor to new cases and new deaths in the past seven days,” the WHO added.
In America, the agency noted a peak in both new cases and deaths, while the region continues to account for the greatest proportion of cumulative cases and deaths.
“While cases numbers remain relatively low, the African region reported the highest increase in new cases (15%) and deaths (30%) this week,” the WHO said, adding that the highest new case and death counts were reported in South Africa, Algeria and Kenya.
The Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific regions also reported a rise in new cases and deaths this week.
In the past week, the United States reported the highest number of cases (over 1.1 million cases, 14% increase from the previous week), India (over 280 000 cases, 8% decrease), Italy (over 230 000 new cases, 3% decrease), Brazil (over 200 000 new cases, 17% increase) and France (over 170 000 new cases, 16% decrease). – SAnews.gov.za
