Cape Town – A total of 9 160 new Covid-19 cases were identified in the last 24 hours in South Africa, compared to 13 100 on Sunday.
This represents a 24.9 percent positivity rate and brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 1 832 479, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, said in a statement on Monday.
The majority of new cases today are from the Gauteng province (69%). Of the other provinces, only the Western Cape, with 647 cases (7%), recorded more than 500 cases in the past 24 hours.
A further 93 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported (112 yesterday), bringing the total number of fatalities to 58 795. A total of 12 586 342 tests have been conducted in both the public and private sectors.
An increase of 341 hospital admissions have been reported in the past 24 hours. A summary of the reported Covid-19 hospital admissions is shown below:
President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended his government's insistence on going ahead with plans to roll out the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine.
Speaking at the opening session of the Qatar Economic Forum, Ramaphosa said SA would be going ahead with its vaccination programme using the J&J vaccine.
The country had secured 31 million doses of the vaccine, but has since been hit by delays after the US Food and Drug Administration raised red flags about the possibility of contamination from a Baltimore production facility.
“As it is now, it (the contamination issue) is affecting (rollout) negatively. We were supposed to have received a number of vaccines but this contamination has delayed that.
’’But we are rather pleased that Johnson & Johnson has agreed that they will replace those two million that we would have had, those that had to be destroyed. They will replace them and our vaccination will get back on stream and hopefully it will move a lot faster,” said Ramaphosa.
Meanwhile, rapper Cassper Nyovest has given the EFF’s upcoming “march to save lives” his support, saying the country needs to be vaccinated.
On Friday, the EFF will picket outside the offices of the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority to demand approval of the Russian and Chinese Covid-19 vaccines.
EFF leader Julius Malema made the announcement last week after the US Food and Drug Administration asked Johnson & Johnson to discard doses of its Covid-19 vaccine meant for SA.
IOL