THE NATIONAL Institute for Communicable Diseases has confirmed that South Africa has technically entered the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Today, South Africa recorded an increase of just over 9000 cases. According to the NICD, 9 149 new cases have been recorded in South Africa in the past 24 hours. A further 100 Covid-related deaths have been reported.
In total, South Africa now has 1 722 086 Covid cases (71 617 active cases) with a death toll of 57 410.
"South Africa technically entered the third wave today as the national seven-day moving average incidence (5 959 cases) now exceeds the new wave threshold as defined by the Ministerial Advisory Committee," the NICD said.
It said the committee defined the new wave seven-day moving average threshold as 30% of the peak incidence of the previous wave.
"The majority of new cases today are from the Gauteng province (61%), followed by the Western Cape (10%) province. Both the Free State and North West provinces accounted for 6%," the NICD reported.
It said there was an increase of 844 admissions in the past 24 hours and 127 additional in-hospital deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
The World Health Organization said that as cases in Africa rose for the third consecutive week and vaccines were becoming increasingly scarce, 47 of Africa’s 54 countries - nearly 90% - were set to miss the September target of vaccinating 10% of their people unless Africa received 225 million more doses.
IOL