Record number of new daily coronavirus cases in South Africa

The Department of Health has published the latest COVID-19 case numbers for South Africa.

Total recorded COVID-19 cases in the country rose to 3,953 – a daily increase of 318 cases.

This is the highest number of new daily COVID-19 cases in South Africa to date – up from the previous high of 251.

There have also been another 10 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in South Africa, bringing the total number of deaths to 75.

The department also detailed the number of COVID-19 tests conducted to date.

It said 143,570 tests have been completed. This is up from 133,774 tests the day before.

“We are observing a steady increase in the number of positive cases,” said the department.

While this is concerning, it said there has been intensified community screening and testing campaigns taking place.

To date, over 3.6 million South Africans have been screened for the virus. 24,174 of these people have been referred for testing.

Provincial breakdown

The tables below show the number of COVID-19 recoveries and deaths, and total cases per province in South Africa.

Total Cases

Number of tests in South Africa

Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, recently warned that unless testing is scaled up significantly the current nationwide lockdown will be mostly wasted.

To address this problem, Madhi said around 1% of the population – 600,000 people – should be tested during the lockdown.

This was never going to happen, and instead Madhi set a target for the rest of the lockdown period of between 15,000 and 20,000 daily tests.

This is still not being met, however, as shown by the latest test numbers.

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