South Africa has administered over 200 000 new COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday, pushing the total to 18 510 943 doses that have been given since the start of the country’s inoculation programme.

This comes after the Department of Health distributed 212 790 vaccines in the past 24 hours, compared with the previous day’s total of 197 698.

There are 153 864 adults who were fully vaccinated since the last reporting cycle.

According to the department, this means there are now 9 526 247 eligible citizens who have received Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot or the two-dose Pfizer vaccine.

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported 1 149 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 908 768.

The majority of new infections were logged in the Western Cape after 258 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus.

The province is followed by 208 cases in KwaZulu-Natal, 156 in Gauteng, 133 in Free State and 132 in the Eastern Cape.

“This increase represents a 3.2% positivity rate,” the institute said, adding that the seven-day moving average daily number of cases has decreased.

In addition, the country registered a further 59 COVID-19 related fatalities, bringing the death toll to 87 981 to date.

The dashboard also shows there were 103 new hospital admissions in the past day, which means 5 874 patients are currently receiving treatment for COVID-19 in both public and private health institutions across the country.

Globally, as of 6 October 2021, there have been 235 673 032 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4 814 651 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation.

In addition, as of 3 October 2021, countries have managed to administer 6 188 903 420 vaccine doses.

Source: South African Government News Agency