Over 7 million COVID-19 vaccines administered
South Africa’s vaccination rollout programme is accelerating, with over seven million vaccine doses administered to date.
According to the Department of Health, the country has now distributed 7 065 432 COVID-19 jabs, of which 194 891 people received their shot on Wednesday, July 28.
The recent statistics show that the total cumulative number of the administered Johnson & Johnson shots now stands at 1 386 580 and 5 678 852 for the Pfizer jab.
Meanwhile, South Africa detected 17 351 new COVID-19 cases from the 71 061 tests that were performed on Wednesday.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), this means the country now has a total of 2 408 525 laboratory-confirmed cases, representing a 24.4% positivity rate.
The hardest-hit provinces include Gauteng which recorded 5 204 new infections, followed by 4 667 in the Western Cape and 1 975 in the KwaZulu-Natal.
In addition, a further 520 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, pushing the tally to 70 908 to date.
“There has been an increase of 726 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours,” the NICD said.
According to the latest data, the country now has 150 629 active cases, while the recovery rate is standing at 90.8% after 2 186 988 people beat the virus.
According to the World Health Organization, as of 28 July, there were 195 266 156 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 4 180 161 deaths, and 3 829 935 772 administered vaccine doses.
Mzansi to ramp up vaccination to 300 thousand a day
Government is gearing up to administer over 300 000 COVID-19 vaccination inoculations a day, with an unprecedented amount of doses set to arrive in the country in the next coming days and weeks.
The delivery of the vaccines will soon see the country have enough stock for about 50 days.
Department of Health Deputy Director-General for the National Health Insurance, Dr Nicholas Crisp, emphasised this during a digital media webinar on how government can leverage social media in the fight against COVID-19.
The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) and the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Institute hosted a webinar on Thursday, July 29.
He said: “This week is the least vaccines we’ve ever had in the system”.
“We are geared to do well over 300 000 vaccinations a day. We have this little window of this week where we have not yet received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
This was set to begin changing from Saturday when the country begins to receive large Pfizer consignments.
“We have received some vaccines last Sunday – another 960 000 doses – but the main vaccines will really start to arrive on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and the week after that,” he said.