South Africa recorded 2,435 new positive Covid-19 cases on Saturday, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in a late night statement.
This as 26,055 new tests were conducted, bringing the country’s total test tally to nearly 8,5 million.
Officially, there are now 69,641 active cases and the total death toll is 46,290.
On Sunday, an additional 110 deaths were reported.
The latest statistics come as the minister and the country’s Ministerial Advisory Committee gave an update on the effectiveness of vaccines against South Africa’s new coronavirus variant.
READ MORE: Bad news for SA’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout plan
Unfortunately, the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which South Africa received a million doses last week, only provides for a 22% risk reduction for mild to moderate cases of the disease caused by the 501Y.V2 variant of the virus, which is driving the second wave of the disease in the country.
– Hungary OKs Russia’s Sputnik V –
Hungarian health authorities have approved Russia’s coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V, with 40,000 doses of the jab already to be given.
Hungary is also the first EU member state to have reached an accord with the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm, announcing an order of five million doses of its jab.
– China delivers 600,000 doses to Cambodia –
China delivers 600,000 doses of its Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine to ally Cambodia, making the kingdom the latest country to use Chinese jabs despite concerns about their efficacy compared with Western alternatives.
– Israel emerging from third virus lockdown –
Israeli barbershops and some other businesses reopen as the country begins easing its third coronavirus lockdown alongside an aggressive vaccination campaign.
Since December, more than 3.4 million of Israel’s nine million people have received a coronavirus vaccine jab in what is seen as the world’s fastest per capita campaign.
– Czech minister says pandemic worse than WWII –
A Czech government minister says the effects of the pandemic are worse than those of World War II as she argues in favour of reopening schools.
Labour Minister Jana Malacova later back pedals, saying she did not mean to dishonour the more than 70 million victims of World War II.
“I’m just trying to show we have to find a way out of these blanket closures,” she says.
– ECB’s Lagarde says cancelling Covid debts ‘unthinkable’ –
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde rejects calls to cancel debts run up by eurozone members to buttress their economies during the Covid-19 crisis.
The remark is a reaction to a call Friday by more than 100 economists for the ECB to further boost the economic recovery of eurozone members by forgiving their debts.
– More than 2.3 million deaths –
The virus has killed at least 2,310,234 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Sunday.
The United States is the worst-affected country with 462,181 deaths from 26,918,271 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 231,012 deaths from 9,497,795 cases, Mexico with 165,786 deaths from 1,926,080 cases, India with 154,996 deaths from 10,826,363 cases, and the United Kingdom with 112,092 deaths from 3,929,835 cases.
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