South Africa now has 1 353 confirmed cases and five people have died from Covid-19, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday.
He said the latest death was from KwaZulu-Natal, a 46-year-old woman from uMlazi, Durban, who had underlying chronic asthma and hypertension.
The other death recorded on Tuesday was from Gauteng, a 79-year-old man with no history of travel who had been to Cape Town and died after having respiratory issues.
More than 39 000 people had been tested, so far, Mkhize said.
The other three deaths are:
* Western Cape - a 48-year-old woman with an underlying condition.
* Free-State - an 85-year-old male who had been at the church which is the hotspot for the virus in that province.
* KZN - a 74-year-old male from Ladysmith who had travelled to the Kruger National Park.
The minister said there was huge pressure on laboratory services to test more people.
“We picked up backlogs in the system. We moved tests to national lab services. By Friday we cleared 4000 lab tests,” he said.
“The rate of increase is not as high as we anticipated. We are observing the trend. We anticipated 4000-5000 but we haven’t reached that.
“We want to be ahead of the curve. Patients are recovering well. Most patients are stable. Numbers in hospital are also increasing.”
The minister said government was working hard to ensure health workers had protective gear.
He added: “Scaling up of testing might increase number of infections. [This] remains serious and a challenge as we go to cold winter months. The step for lockdown was important. Remember hygiene and stay at home.
“Reduction of traffic in trains and taxis has helped contain spread. We are picking up positive cases but quarantine means infection won’t spread.”