South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Thursday reported 22,391 new COVID-19 cases from 75,251 tests conducted over the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s total number of infections to 3,093,452.
In the same period, the NICD recorded 22 new fatalities, bringing the total number of COVID-19 related deaths in the country to 90,060.
South Africa remains o be the hardest-hit country by the pandemic in Africa, accounting for 35.27 per cent of the continent’s confirmed cases and 40.17 per cent of its fatalities.
The country was the first to report the new Omicron variant to the World Health Organization (WHO), sparking fears of a possible deterioration of the virus situation.
The Omicron variant has since spread to close to 60 countries, but experts say three is still no evidence that it is more deadly than initial strains.
In efforts to contain further spread of the virus, the South African government is undertaking a nationwide vaccination exercise.
So far, more than 26.7 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the country, with over 17.2 million South Africans fully vaccinated.
