SOUTH AFRICA – South Africa has manage to administer close to half a million vaccine doses in the last 24 hrs, the highest number of vaccines administered with such a duration in the country, as over 7, 000 new COVID-19 infections have been reported.

This means nearly five million adults have been fully inoculated after 247, 293 vaccine shots were administered in the last 24 hours.

According to the latest data from the Department of Health, 10, 790, 501 COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed, which translates to 8, 240, 039 people who have received the Johnson & Johnson or the Pfizer shot.

Meanwhile, the infections continue to increase, with 7, 632 new COVID-19 cases having been identified in South Africa.

The majority of new cases were logged in KwaZulu-Natal (2, 542), followed by Western Cape (1, 634) and Eastern Cape (1, 286).

According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), this brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2, 698, 605.

“This increase represents a 20.2% positivity rate,” the NICD said, adding that the seven-day moving average daily number of cases has decreased.

In addition, a further 163 people succumbed to the respiratory disease, bringing the death toll to 79, 584 to date.

The data also shows that 345 hospital admissions were reported in the past 24 hours, which increases the number to 13, 537.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, which has so far reported the highest COVID-19 caseload in the East Africa region received 300,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses donated by the Chinese government.

“This support and donations come at a very critical time where we need to really enhance our strategy of prevention in addition to our non-pharmaceutical interventions which is rolling out vaccines especially to those who need it the most,” Ethiopia Minister of Health Lia Tadesse said.

The Ethiopia Minister of Education Getahun Mekuria also commended China for providing the latest batch of COVID-19 vaccines, which will mainly be administered to those engaged in the education sector.

The east African country has reported 295,804 COVID-19 cases and 4,561 COVID-19 related deaths.

Globally, as of 23 August 2021, there have been 211,730,035 confirmed cases, 4,430,697 deaths, and 4, 619,976,274 administered vaccine doses, said the World Health Organization.

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