Covid-19 update: More than 30 million vaccine doses administered in SA

The health department says more than 30 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered in South Africa as of Wednesday evening.

This as the World Health Organization bemoans the slow vaccination rate in other African countries.

According to the organisation, Africa has received “more than 587 million vaccine doses” but it “is still struggling to expand rollout, with only 11 percent of the population fully vaccinated”, explained the WHO regional office for Africa.

Africa must boost the vaccination rate against Covid-19 “six times” to reach the target of 70 percent vaccine coverage set for the end of the first half of 2022.

“The world has finally heard our calls. Africa is now accessing the vaccines it has demanded for far too long. This is a dose of hope for this year,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

“However, a dependable pipeline must go hand in hand with operational funding to move doses out of depots and into people’s arms.”

Since the start of the pandemic, Africa has recorded 10.8 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 239,000 deaths, according to the WHO.

Covid-19 in South Africa

South Africa has identified 3,266 new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3.616,075.

This increase represents a 10.6% positivity rate, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, has announced.

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (31%), followed by Western Cape (17%); Kwa-Zulu Natal and Limpopo each accounted for 12% respectively. North West accounted for 9%; Mpumalanga accounted for 8%; Free State accounted for 5%; Eastern Cape accounted for 4%; and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.

“Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of Covid-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDoH reports 82 deaths and of these, 12 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 95,545 to date.”

22.374,263 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

There has been an increase of 127 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

Compiled by Vhahangwele Nemakonde. Additional reporting by AFP