ON Thursday, Mzansi logged 9 149 new Covid-19 cases, which represented a 15,7% positivity testing rate.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), figures from the past seven days showed that South Africa was now experiencing the third wave.
“South Africa technically entered the third wave today as the national seven-day moving average incidence of 5 959 cases, which now exceeds the new wave threshold, as defined by the Ministerial Advisory Committee,” NICD said.
The committee, which provided recommendations on managing the pandemic, defined the new wave seven-day moving average threshold as 30% of the peak incidence of the previous one.
The majority of the new infections were from Gauteng with 5 597 cases at 61%, followed by Western Cape with 932 at 10%. This brought the number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 1 722 086 since the outbreak.
NICD also observed an increase of 844 admissions, pushing the total to 7 300 patients in health institutions across the country. An additional 127 in-hospital deaths were reported in the past 24 hours.
The data was based on the 12 044 072 tests conducted, 58 322 of which were done since the last reporting cycle.
To date, 1 619 011 people were vaccinated.
