South Africa Surpasses 18 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Shots

South Africa has now crossed the 18 million mark for administered COVID-19 vaccine doses. This comes after the government distributed 184 324 in the past 24 hours.

According to the Department of Health, this means the country has now given 18 073 784 vaccines since its rollout programme.

Meanwhile, as of Monday, the number of fully vaccinated adults now stands at 9 213 503, of which 129 539 people were jabbed by Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer in the last 24 hours.

The dashboard also shows that 57.16% of vaccinees are females, while 42.84% are males.

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported 429 new COVID-19 cases and 39 fatalities.

This brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 906 851 and 87 819 for the death toll.

According to the NICD, the vast majority of new cases were logged in the Western Cape after 93 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus.

The province is followed by 90 infections in KwaZulu-Natal, 82 in Gauteng and 41 in Free State.

“This increase represents a 2.6% positivity rate,” the public health institute said, adding that the seven-day moving average daily number of cases has decreased.

In addition, there were 52 new hospital admissions in the past day, which means 6 166 patients are currently receiving treatment for COVID-19 in both public and private health institutions across the country.

The information is based on the 17 800 434 test conducted since the last reporting cycle, of which 16 514 were conducted on Monday.

As of 4 October 2021, there have been 234 809 103 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 4 800 375 deaths and over six billion administered vaccines reported to the World Health Organisation. – SAnews.gov.za