Covid-19: SA death toll passes 700, cases increase to more than 34,000

An additional 1,674 cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in SA in the last 24 hours.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, the health ministry said there were now 34,357 cases of the respiratory illness.

There were also an additional 22 deaths recorded in the last 24-hour cycle - all of them in the Western Cape.

This means that there are now 705 fatalities from Covid-19 in SA - of them, 525 have been in the Western Cape.

In total, 17,291 recoveries have been recorded.

The figures were based on a total of 742,742 tests, of which 17,617 tests have been conducted in the last 24-hour reporting period.

The provincial breakdown of cases, deaths and recoveries was on Monday provided as:

• Western Cape — 22,567 cases, 525 deaths, 11,431 recoveries;
• Gauteng — 4,231 cases, 33 deaths, 2,060 recoveries; 
• Eastern Cape — 4,111 cases, 82 deaths, 2,123 recoveries;
• KwaZulu-Natal — 2,565 cases, 52 deaths, 1,248 recoveries;
• Free State — 285 cases, 8 deaths, 123 recoveries;
• Limpopo — 192 cases, 3 deaths, 144 recoveries;
• North West — 187 cases, 1 death, 45 recoveries;
• Mpumalanga — 131 cases, 0 deaths, 86 recoveries;
• Northern Cape — 82 cases, 1 death, 31 recoveries; and
• Unallocated — 6 cases.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained testing and recovery figures provided by the health ministry. These figures were later updated, and this story has been updated to reflect those latest statistics.