South Africa has recorded 15 424 new confirmed COVID-19 cases.

According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Tuesday, KwaZulu-Natal remains the hardest-hit province after recording 4 009 new infections.

The province is followed by 3 324 cases in the Western Cape, 3 316 in Gauteng and 1 442 in the Eastern Cape, while the rest of the provinces recorded less than 1 000 additional cases each.

The latest statistics represents a 27.6% positivity rate.

In addition, 35 more people lost their lives to the virus.

This means there have been 3 332 008 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in South Africa and 90 488 people who have died, government figures show.

Meanwhile, 9 023 patients are currently receiving hospital treatment, with 633 being admitted in the past 24 hours.

According to the Department of Health, 64 928 new vaccine jabs were distributed in the past 24 hours, 51 892 of which were given to adults.

This pushes the total number of administered vaccines to 27 669 950.

So far, there are 15 428 274 or 38.5% adults who are fully jabbed.

The latest statistics show that 861 730 Pfizer doses have been given to children between the ages of 12 and 17.

Globally, as of 21 December 2021, there have been 274 628 461 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5 358 978 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Global view

According to WHO, between 13 and 19 December, the global number of new cases remained similar to those reported during the previous week.

However, the weekly incidence of deaths decreased by 9%.

“Nonetheless, this corresponds to over 4.1 million new cases and just under 45 000 new deaths,” the organisation said.

Africa continued to report the largest increase in new cases in the last week (53%), followed by the Western Pacific Region (12%).

Meanwhile, the African region, was the only region to report an increase in the number of new weekly deaths (15%).

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (725 750 new cases, 12% decrease), the United Kingdom (507 984 new cases, 45% increase), France (358 175 new cases, 7% increase) and Germany (283 673 new cases, 19% decrease).

Of the 1 051 598 sequences globally, 1 009 253 (96%) were Delta and 16 988 (1.6%) were Omicron, while the other circulating variants accounted for less than 1%.

Source: South African Government News Agency