South Africa has administered 191 264 COVID-19 vaccines, pushing the total to 21 924 915.
According to the Department of Health, of the over 191 000 jabs distributed on Wednesday, 179 094 were given to the adults, while children between the ages of 12 and 17 received 12 170 shots.
This means there are now 86 920 first doses of Pfizer COVID-19 jabs given to children since the start of their inoculation programme.
In addition, 11 999 473 or 29.9% of the adult population are now fully vaccinated, of which 154 047 either received the Johnson & Johnson single-dose shot or the second jab of the Pfizer vaccine in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), said the country recorded 472 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total to 2 920 581 laboratory-confirmed cases.
The majority of new cases were reported in Gauteng (103), followed by Western Cape (88), KwaZulu-Natal (68), Northern Cape (59), Free State (42), Eastern Cape (33), North West (35), Mpumalanga (32) and Limpopo (12).
“This increase represents a 1.4% positivity rate,” explained the NICD.
According to the institution, the country recorded more cases on Wednesday compared to the 331 infections recorded on Tuesday and higher than the average number of cases per day over the seven preceding days.
In addition, South Africa lost 62 people to COVID-19 related complications, bringing the death toll to 89 049, while hospital admissions increased by 29 in the past 24 hours.
Globally, as of 27 October 2021, there have been 244 385 444 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4 961 489 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Global view
According to the WHO’s COVID-19 weekly epidemiological update, during the week of 18 to 24 October 2021, the global number of new cases increased slightly (4%) compared to that of the previous week, with just over 2.9 million new cases.
The European region accounted for more than half (57%) of global new weekly cases and was the only region that reported an increase.
The largest decrease in new cases was again reported in Africa (21%), followed by the Western Pacific region (17%).
Meanwhile, according to the latest data, the number of new deaths also peaked slightly by 5% during the past week, with over 49 000 new deaths reported.
Increases were reported in the European (14%) and South-East Asia (13%) regions, while the largest decline was observed in the Western Pacific (16%), Eastern Mediterranean (13%) and the African (11%) regions.
In addition, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (512 956 new cases, 12% decrease), the United Kingdom (330 465 new cases, 16% increase), Russia (248 956 new cases, 15% increase), Turkey (196 850 new cases, 8% decrease) and Ukraine (134 235 new cases, 43% increase).
Source: South African Government News Agency