Covid-19 update: 27 million vaccine doses administered in SA

More than 27 million vaccine doses have been administered in South Africa as of Friday, the health department has announced.

The country will next month start giving Pfizer booster shots against coronavirus, health officials announced on Friday, a day after the country reported a near-record high in daily cases of the disease.

“The first people who will qualify for the booster dose in South Africa will be people over the age of 60 years,” Dr Nicolas Crisp, director general at the health ministry, told a weekly news conference.

The booster shots were approved by the South African Health Products Authority (Sahpra) for individuals over 18 years of age earlier this week.

Sahpra initially approved the use of Pfizer’s Comirnaty® Covid-19 vaccine on 16 March 2021, in terms of section 21 of the Medicines and Related Substance Act (Act 101 of 1965).

On 17 November 2021, Sahpra then received an application from Pfizer to amend the dosing schedule for the Comirnaty® Covid-19 vaccine, allowing an optional third (booster) dose, said Sahpra in a statement on Wednesday.

Following evaluation of the data submitted, Sahpra has approved:

• A third dose of the Comirnaty® Covid-19 vaccine in individuals aged 18 years and older, to be administered at least 6 months after the second dose.
• A third dose of the Comirnaty® Covid-19 vaccine in individuals aged 12 years and older who are severely immunocompromised, to be administered at least 28 days after the second dose.

Experts are working to determine whether current Covid vaccines will work against the new highly-mutated variant, which was discovered by South African scientists last month.

As of Friday, South Africa has also reported a total of 3.112,469 positive cases of Covid-19, with 19,018 new cases reported in the past 24 hours.

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (49%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (13%). Western Cape accounted for 11%; North West accounted for 6%; Eastern Cape, Free State, Limpopo and Mpumalanga each accounted for 5% respectively; and Northern Cape accounted for 1% of today’s new cases.

20 deaths have been reported, bringing the total to 90,080 deaths.

The cumulative number of recoveries now stand at 2.878,855, with a recovery rate of 92.5%.

Additional reporting by AFP