Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has announced 288 more Covid-19 related deaths and 2781 new infections.
Johannesburg - Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has announced 288 more Covid-19 related deaths and 2781 new infections on Friday night.
This takes South Africa’s Covid-19 infections to over 1.47 million infections since March, with the death toll now at 47 670 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 93% currently.
Mkhize said they had now tested over 8.6 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, followed by the Western Cape, KZN and Gauteng.
Of the latest deaths, Mkhize said the majority of the deceased came from Gauteng, Eastern Cape and the Free State
Latest deaths by province:
Gauteng - 166 deaths
Eastern Cape - 26
Free State - 24
KwaZulu Natal - 23
Western Cape - 22
Mpumalanga - 16
Northern Cape - 7
Limpopo - 4
Meanwhile, 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.
South Africa will be kick starting its massive coronavirus vaccination programme with vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson.
On Thursday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa said they were expecting 80 000 doses to arrive next week, with an additional 500 000 doses arriving within the next four weeks. South Africa has procured 9 million vaccine doses from the American pharmaceutical giants, as well as 20 million doses from Pfizer have been promised, along with an additional 12 million doses from the COVAX facility.
South Africa also expects vaccine doses through the AU’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team facility.
But speaking out for the first time since being snubbed by South Africa, AstraZeneca chief executive officer Pascal Soriot said while the production of their vaccine had not been perfect, he insisted that the vaccine shot would still have a big impact on the pandemic.
He also pledged to double its output to Africa by April, while the African Union gave its backing for the shot. - Additional reporting by Reuters
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