South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout programme is gaining momentum with 221 417 vaccines administered yesterday, 20 July.
According to the National Health Department, this pushes the cumulative total to 5 558 378 vaccines administered, while 70 950 more people registered to receive their jab in the last 24 hours.
According to the latest data, the country detected 8 929 new COVID-19 infections, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 311 232.
The majority of new cases are from Gauteng (37%), followed by the Western Cape (19%).
The increase represents a 22.2% positivity rate, while a further 596 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing the tally to 67 676.
In addition, there were 808 more hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the trends in the coming week will be crucial to determine whether the peak of the third wave has been reached or not.
This is according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) which noted a drop in the testing rates the past two weeks.
“And while this may be reflective of a decreased need for testing due to decreased infections, access to testing has been limited in certain areas due to the social unrest,” said NICD’s, Dr Michelle Groome.
NICD’s Senior Medical Epidemiologist for Public Health Surveillance and Geospatial Modelling, Dr Harry Moultrie, said the national seven-day moving average of SARS-CoV-2 cases has declined since 6 July 2021, largely because of the decrease in Gauteng.
“The percentage testing positive, however, increased in Eastern Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, and Western Cape in week 28 compared to previous weeks,” he explained.
“While the percentage testing positive has decreased in Gauteng, Limpopo and North West, the percentage testing positive remained very high in these provinces,” he added.
nd 124 reported cases of the Delta variant.
