The Department of Health confirmed the cumulative number of detected COVID-19 cases is 671 669 with 903 new cases identified since the last report.
The cumulative number of tests conducted to date is 4 152 480 with 9 014 new tests conducted since the last report.
The Department reported 188 more COVID-19 related deaths: 3 from Eastern Cape 1 from KwaZulu-Natal, 2 from Gauteng, 4 from Western Cape and 178 from the Free State.
This brings the total number of COVID-19 related deaths to 16 586.
There has been a two week delay in the reporting of Free State deaths as the province collated data from the various districts and verified this against Home Affairs Data.
This is part of efforts to improve the quality of data by aligning information from facilities with Home Affairs statistics. Data from postmortem swabs also had to be collated and verified.
This is in line with the recommendations of the Medical Research Council. The data is now up to date.
Our recoveries now stand at 604 478 which translates to a recovery rate of 90%.