Tebogo Msimanga |
The Department of Health on Thursday recorded over 500 COVID-19 deaths due to going audit exercise conducted by provinces across the country to address a backlog of COVID-19 mortality and new cases. Out of 551 deaths recorded on Thursday, only 45 have occurred in the past 48 hours.
National Health Spokesperson Foster Mohale said provinces like the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal account for 476 historical combined deaths in patients with documented SARS-Cov-2 infection.
“The identification of these historic deaths is part of the process to align the provincial death line list with excess deaths.”
Mohale further said the provincial COVID-19 dashboards reflect COVID-19 deaths by date of death rather than by date reported and provide the most accurate trends in deaths in patients with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection.
