South Africa has now distributed 24 216 614 COVID-19 vaccine doses, of which 134 586 were administered on Tuesday.

According to the Department of Health, of the new administered vaccines, 125 595 were given to adults and 8 991 to children between the ages of 12 and 17.

In addition, the country has now fully vaccinated 13 583 910 or 33.9% of the adult population in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, there are now 309 995 adolescents who have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

As of Tuesday, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases has risen to 2 926 348 with 273 new cases reported.

The highest number of new infections were detected in Gauteng after 148 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus, followed by 31 cases in the Western Cape and 27 in KwaZulu-Natal, while the rest of the provinces logged less than 20 new cases.

According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the increase represents a 0.9% positivity rate.

However, according to the health institute, the seven-day moving average daily number of cases has increased.

In addition, the death toll now stands at 89 504 after 15 people lost their lives to COVID-19, while the country recorded additional 35 hospital admissions.

Global view

Between 8 and 14 November 2021, the increasing trend in new global weekly cases continued, with over 3.3 million new cases reported – a 6% increase as compared to the previous week.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Americas, the European and the Western Pacific regions all reported surges in new weekly infections as compared to the previous week, while all other regions reported stable or declining trends.

Similarly, the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update shows that the European region reported a 5% increase in new deaths, while the other regions recorded stable or declining trends.

Globally, the WHO said under 50 000 new deaths were logged, similar to the previous week.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (550 684 new cases, 8% increase), Russia (275 579 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures), Germany (254 436 new cases, 50% increase), the United Kingdom (252 905 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures), and Turkey (180 167 new cases, 9% decrease).

As of 14 November, over 252 million confirmed global cases and over five million deaths have been reported.

“The current global genetic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 is characterised by a predominance of the Delta variant, with the declining prevalence of other variants among sequences submitted to publicly available datasets or detections reported to the WHO,” the update read.

Data shows that Delta has outcompeted other variants, including other Variant of Concern (VOC) in most countries.

Of 799 645 sequences uploaded with specimens collected in the last 60 days, the WHO said, 797 174 (99.7%) were Delta, 791 (0.1%) Gamma, 313 (0.1%) Alpha, 15 (0.1%) Beta and 0.1% comprised other circulating variants (including Mu and Lambda).

Source: South African Government News Agency