The sharp increase in infections is attributed to the highly contagious new strain of Omicron. (File)
Johannesburg:
Official figures showed the number of Covid-19 infections in South Africa rose to a record 3 million on Friday as a new wave caused by the Omicron variant swept through parts of the country, numbers whether the official show.
The government on Friday reported 16,055 new cases in a 24-hour period, bringing the total number of lab-confirmed cases to 3,004,203.
“This increase represents a positive rate of 24.3%,” the government running the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NICD) said in a daily update.
The majority of new cases reported on Friday, 72%, were detected in Gauteng province, the country’s most populous province.
Gauteng whose capital is Pretoria and the economic and financial center of the country, Johannesburg, have emerged as the epicenter of the new variant since the new variant was first discovered there last week.
On Monday, a leading epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim issued a forecast that coronavirus infections in the continent’s worst-hit country, could see more than three times the number of daily infections. more than 10,000 cases this week.
Gauteng province beat forecast numbers, recording 11,553 cases on Friday. Other provinces recorded less than 1,000 cases each.
The sharp increase in infections attributed to the highly contagious new strain of Omicron was first reported by South African scientists on November 25.
Still, the death toll remains relatively low, with 25 Covid-19-related deaths reported on Friday, bringing the total death toll to 89,944 since the pandemic broke out.
