South Africa has administered 197 698 COVID-19 jabs in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of doses to 18 285 920.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health said 9 364 725 adults are now fully vaccinated, of which 141 865 people were jabbed with Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine or the two-dose Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday.

In addition, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said the country logged 768 new infections, pushing the number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 907 619.

The majority of new cases were reported in KwaZulu-Natal (193), followed by Western Cape (151) and Gauteng (127).

“This increase represents a 2.7% positivity rate,” the NICD said, adding that the seven-day moving average daily number of cases continues to decrease.

The dashboard also shows that 103 more people succumbed to the respiratory disease.

This means the official death toll now stands at 87 922 since the outbreak.

The information is based on the 17 828 983 tests, of which 28 549 were conducted since the last reporting cycle.

In addition, there were 110 new hospital admissions in the past day, which means 6 036 patients are currently receiving treatment for COVID-19 in both public and private health institutions across the country.

The public health institute has reminded citizens to adhere to preventative measures such as getting vaccinated for COVID-19, wearing masks, opting to gather in ventilated spaces, avoiding unnecessary gatherings, keeping a social distance of one meter or more and washing hands regularly with soap and water.

“This helps to limit your risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19,” the NICD said.

According to the World Health Organisation, as of 5 October 2021, there were now 235 175 106 globally confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4 806 841 deaths.

Global view

According to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update, the number of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decline.

“This is a trend that has been observed since August,” the agency explained.

Meanwhile, the WHO reported that over 3.1 million new cases and just over 54 000 new deaths were recorded during the week of 27 September to 3 October 2021.

The report shows that cases this week dropped by 9% as compared to the previous week, while deaths remained similar.

All regions reported a decline in the number of new cases this week apart from the European region, which remained similar to the week before.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (760 571 new cases, similar to the previous week), the United Kingdom (239 781 new cases, similar to the previous week), Turkey (197 277 new cases, similar to the previous week), Russia (165 623 new cases, 13% increase), and India (161 158 new cases, 21% decrease).

Globally, the Delta variant, which is by far the world’s most dominant Coronavirus variant, has been reported in 192 countries.

Source: South African Government News Agency