Johannesburg - Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has announced 183 more Covid-19 related deaths and 1376 new infections on Monday night.
This takes South Africa’s Covid-19 infections to over 1.47 million infections since March, with the death toll now at 46 473 virus related deaths..
The number of recoveries in the country stands at over 1.3 million recoveries, which means there is a recovery rate of about 92% currently.
Mkhize said they had now tested over 8.5 million people in the private and public sector, with over 15 500 tests conducted in the past 24 hours.
The Eastern Cape province has the most deaths, with 10975, followed by the Western Cape with 10638, KZN, with 9091, and Gauteng, with 8660, have the most fatalities in the country.
Of the latest deaths, Mkhize said the majority of the deceased came from Gauteng, Western Cape and the Eastern Cape.
Gauteng - 45 deaths
Western Cape - 30
Eastern Cape - 27
Free State - 24
Mpumalanga - 21
North West - 19
KZN - 12
Limpopo - 3
Northern Cape - 2
Mkhize, along with scientists from the ministerial advisory committee on coronavirus, announced on Sunday that South Africa would be temporarily halting the process of rolling out the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine which arrived from India in January.
This came after research conducted locally showed that the vaccine had a low efficacy to the dominant 501.V2 variant, which was identified by local scientists in December.
At the same time, South Africa was forging ahead with procuring Johnson and Johson vaccines and they were expected to arrive in the country in February.
IOL