The COVID-19 death figure has increased from 17 248 to 17 408 after 160 patients lost their lives to the global pandemic, Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize on Thursday October 8.
Mkhize said of the new deaths, 18 were recorded in the Eastern Cape, six in the Free State, 105 in KwaZulu-Natal, 13 in Gauteng, six in Limpopo, four in Mpumalanga , and eight in the Western Cape.
He also said the number of COVID-19 infections has moved from 685 155 to 686 891 after 1 736 people tested positive for the killer disease in the last 24 hour cycle.
He also said of the 686 891 cases recorded, 618 771 patients have recovered from the virulent disease, which translates to a recovery rate of 90 percent.
However, Mkhize said he was concerned with the noticeable increased number of deaths recorded in the past few days.
” There has been a noticeable increase in the number of deaths recently which caused us concern as we have received reports from the Medical Research Council (MRC) that there have been no in excess deaths for three weeks in a row,” he said
He said he consulted the provinces to ascertain the reason for the increased deaths numbers. “We have received reports that the provinces are implementing the recommendations of the MRC to reconcile the data with Home Affairs deaths data. In addition provinces are auditing the deaths data either by mining data from DATCOV surveillance reports and identifying unreported deaths or auditing the facilities on the ground. We welcome this robust refinement of data collation as it reassures us that moving forward, we exercise precision in our epidemiological surveillance,” he said.
