The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) recorded more than 2 800 new Covid-19 cases across the country on Friday.

“Today the institute reports 2 862 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3 637 673,” NICD said.

The majority of new cases in the last 24 hours were identified in the same three provinces that recorded the highest number of cases since the pandemic began – Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

And 32 840 were conducted in South Africa on Friday in both private and public sectors, representing a positivity rate of 8.7% when the number of new cases are considered.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDOH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDOH reports 146 deaths and of these, eight occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours,” the institute adds.

Some 103 more patients were admitted into South Africa’s hospitals, however, the current number of hospital admissions on Friday illustrates a continued decrease since the start of the week.

The total number of currently admitted patients in hospitals per day:

• Monday: 4 585
• Tuesday: 4 502
• Wednesday: 4 455
• Thursday: 4 354
• Friday: 4 228

Meanwhile, the country administered a total of 65 356 vaccines in the last 24 hours – Gauteng (20 942) administered the bulk of South Africa’s total, followed by the Western Cape (9 501), and Gauteng (9 284).