Covid-19 update: SA records 14,271 new cases and 473 deaths

On Thursday South Africa recorded 14,271 new Covid-19 cases.

This is according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division responsible for the surveillance of Covid-19.

This takes the cumulative number of confirmed laboratory cases to 2,568, 511, which represents a 22.5% positivity rate.

The institute reported a further 473 Covid-19 related deaths, taking the total number of deaths to 76,247.

“15,426,667 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors,” the institute reported.

In the past 24-hours, the Western Cape surpassed KwaZulu-Natal with new infections.

“The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape (26%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (25%). Gauteng Province accounted for 16%; Eastern Cape accounted for 11%; Mpumalanga accounted for 6%; Free State and North West each accounted for 5% respectively; Limpopo Province accounted for 3% and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.”

It reported a further 579 hospital admissions.

Gauteng looking to ramp up daily Covid-19 vaccinations to 100k

The Gauteng provincial government on Thursday announced that it was aiming to ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination campaign as Premier David Makhura said he was worried about the slow pace of inoculations for the elderly.

Makhura was speaking in Tshwane on Thursday during an oversight visit to inspect vaccination centres around the area.

He said the provincial government wanted to double the number of vaccinations administered per day to 100,000.

Makhura said the focus would be placed particularly on the busy cities and metros of the province.

“Currently we are vaccinating on average 53,000 people a day,” said Makhura.

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“We want to vaccinate 100,000 people a day in Gauteng. The focus is Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni because that is where we have the largest number of people in Gauteng.”

Makhura also lamented the slow pace of vaccinations among the elderly population.

“We got a bit of a problem amongst the elderly people. We are going to be working with the Post Office. They [elderly people] come to get their pension and grants there. We want to make sure that we meet the elderly people first.”

The Department of Health had targeted 1.3 million pensioners above the ages of 60 but only 700,000 have been inoculated so far.

To add to that, the 50-59 age cohort is also not vaccinating. There are at least half a million that have received their jabs since the beginning of their vaccination period.