South Africa has now crossed the 11 million mark for adults who are fully vaccinated, as the country gears up to inoculate children aged 12 and older from Wednesday.
According to the Department of Health, there are 135 449 people who were either given the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or the second shot of the Pfizer vaccine in the past 24 hours.
The latest data pushes the number to 11 036 024 fully vaccinated adult citizens.
The department distributed 185 440 doses on Tuesday, bringing the total to 20 580 832 since the vaccination rollout programme.
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said 28 339 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours with 453 new cases, representing a 1.6% positivity rate.
The majority of new cases were logged in KwaZulu-Natal (103), Gauteng (94), Western Cape (84), Free State (46), Mpumalanga (40), Northern Cape (30), North West (26), Eastern Cape (24) and Limpopo (six).
The NICD also reported 50 additional COVID-19 related deaths, taking the total number of registered fatalities to 88 674 to date.
“There has been an increase of 56 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours,” the institute said.
Globally, as of 19 October 2021, there have been 240 940 937 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4 903 911 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation.
Global view
Globally, WHO is reporting that the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths have stabilised this week.
According to the agency, there were more than 2.7 million registered cases and over 46 000 new deaths, a 4% and 2% decrease respectively, representing similar numbers as those reported last week.
Except for the European region, which for the third consecutive week reported an increase in new COVID-19 cases, WHO said all the other regions reported a decline.
The largest decrease in new weekly cases was reported from the African region (18%), followed by the Western Pacific region (17%).
Meanwhile, Africa also reported the largest drop in weekly deaths (25%), followed by the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean regions with 19% and 8% declines, respectively.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (582 707 new cases, 11% decrease), the United Kingdom (283 756 new cases, 14% increase), Russia (217 322 new cases, 15% increase), Turkey (213 981 new cases, similar to the number reported in the previous week) and India (114 244 new cases, 18% decrease).
Globally, the Delta variant, which drove South Africa’s third wave, has now been reported in 193 countries, while two new States were added across all six WHO regions.
Source: South African Government News Agency