35% of the Adult Population Now Vaccinated in South Africa

A total of 34.7% of the adults in South Africa have received at least one dose of the Pfizer or the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the Department of Health, 19 668 177 doses have been administered to 13 799 325 eligible vaccinees since the start of the country’s inoculation rollout programme.

This comes after 196 696 jabs were distributed on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the country has 10 370 743 people who have been fully vaccinated, translating to 26.06% of the country’s adult population.

Of these, 145 444 people were fully jabbed in the past 24 hours.

The dashboard shows that the Western Cape is leading the race with 43.55% of its adults who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The province is followed by the Eastern Cape (39.84%), Limpopo (39.72%), Free State (39.38%), Northern Cape (34.95%), North West (31.70%), Gauteng (31.65%), KwaZulu-Natal (30.45%), and Mpumalanga (27.91%).

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported 942 new COVID-19 cases.

The Western Cape has recorded the majority of new confirmed COVID-19 cases after 220 people contracted the virus.

The province is followed by Gauteng, which accounted for 172 additional infections, 142 in KwaZulu-Natal, 103 in Free State, 94 in the Eastern Cape and 93 in the Northern Cape.

This means there is now a total of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 913 880.

“This increase represents a 2.4% positivity rate,” the institute said, adding that there has been an increase of 70 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

In addition, 37 more people succumbed to the disease, pushing the death toll to 88 466 since the outbreak.

Global view

Globally, as of 13 October 2021, there have been 238 521 855 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4 863 818 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

According to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update, the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths has continued to decline since late August.

The WHO said over 2.8 million new cases and over 46 000 new deaths were reported during the week of 4 to 10 October 2021, representing a 7% and 10% decrease respectively, as compared to the previous week.

Apart from the European region, all the other regions reported a decline, the agency added.

The data shows that the largest drop in new weekly cases was reported from the African region (32%), followed by the Western Pacific region (26%).

In addition, the new weekly deaths reported also declined in all regions except for the European region, which reported an increase of 11% as compared to the previous week.

“The largest decline in weekly deaths was reported from the Western Pacific and the African regions, with both showing a 34% decline as compared to the previous week.”

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (653 837 new cases, 12% decrease), the United Kingdom (249 699 new cases, similar to the previous week), Turkey (205 266 new cases, similar to the previous week), Russia (188 829 new cases, 14% increase), and India (139 572 new cases, 13% decrease).

Globally, no new countries, territories or areas reported cases with variants of concern (VOCs) in the past week.

As of 12 October, the Delta variant has been reported across all six WHO regions, in 191 countries. – SAnews.gov.za