The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) stated on December 12 that information technology challenges experienced by public sector laboratories resulted in Covid-19 reporting delays.

“For the NICD to report comprehensive data, the institute relies on test reports from private and public laboratories to generate daily statistics, including the number of new cases, new tests, and percent positivity rate,” said Sinenhlanhla Jimoh, senior communications manager at NICD.

“The NICD was informed in the previous week that IT challenges were experienced, which resulted in reporting delays. “Some Covid-19 surveillance data may take longer to reflect on the national line list, which means that some Covid-19 surveillance data may take longer to reflect on the national line list,” Jimoh said.

“The NICD will continue to update Covid-19 surveillance databases retrospectively, as the impacted public laboratories remedy the existing IT difficulties.

“This will result in retrospective data being processed onto the line list, increasing the cumulative number of tests,” Jimoh said.

By December 12, the NICD reported 37 875 new cases, which includes 19 840 retrospective cases and 18 035 new cases. The positivity testing rate in the previous 24 hours was 28.9%.

A further 21 Covid-19 related deaths were reported, which brought the total to 90 137.