South Africa conducted 36 216 Coronavirus tests in the last 24 hours, of which 3 197 came back positive, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the country logged 132 deaths, with 23 occurring in the past 24 to 48 hours.
According to the NICD, Gauteng continues to record the highest number of daily infections after 898 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus.
Gauteng is followed by 483 infections in KwaZulu-Natal and 460 in the Western Cape, pushing the positivity rate to 8.8%.
This means the country now has 3 585 888 laboratory-confirmed cases since the outbreak, while the death toll is sitting at 94 397 to date.
Data shows that hospital admissions increased by 179 to 6 284 since the last reporting cycle out of the 73 368 active cases.
In addition, the cumulative number of recoveries now stands at 3 418 123 with a recovery rate of 95.3%.
The Department of Health distributed 82 572 COVID-19 vaccine doses on Tuesday, bringing the total to 29 540 132 since the start of the vaccination rollout programme.
Meanwhile, the country is now home to 16 338 574 or 41.05% fully jabbed adults, while 517 539 booster shots have been administered.
Global view
Globally, as of 25 January 2022, there have been 352 796 704 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5 600 434 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The number of new COVID-19 cases across the world increased by 5% between 17 and 23 January 2022, while new deaths remained similar to that reported during the previous week.
According to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update, over 21 million new infections were detected, representing the highest number of weekly cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.
In addition, WHO regions reported nearly 50 000 new deaths.
“A slower increase in case incidence was observed at the global level, with only half of the regions reported an increase in the number of new weekly cases, as compared to five out of six regions in the previous week.”
The Eastern Mediterranean region recorded the largest peak in the number of new cases (39%), followed by South-East Asia (36%) and Europe (13%), while Africa reported the largest dip in the number of new cases (31%).
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (4 215 852 new cases, a 24% decrease), France (2 443 821 new cases, a 21% increase), India (2 115 100 new cases, a 33% increase), Italy (1 231 741 new cases, similar to the previous week), and Brazil (824 579 new cases, a 73% increase).
According to the agency, of the 372 680 sequences with specimens collected in the last 30 days, 332 155 (89.1%) were Omicron, 39 804 (10.7%) were Delta, while the rest of the circulating variants account for less than 1%. – SAnews.gov.za
