NATIONAL NEWS - As of Wednesday, South Africa recorded a total of 75, 774 deaths since the pandemic hit our shores, with 573 Covid-19 related deaths recorded since the last report.
This was revealed by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division responsible for the surveillance of Covid-19.
The institute reported 7 502 new Covid-19 cases that have been identified in the country.
This brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2,554,240.
“This increase represents an 18.9% positivity rate,” reported the institute.
It announced that a total of 15,363,298 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.
“The majority of new cases today are from KwaZulu-Natal (26%), followed by Western Cape (23%). Gauteng Province accounted for 17%; Eastern Cape accounted for 13%; Free State accounted for 6%; Mpumalanga and North West each accounted for 5% respectively; Limpopo Province accounted for 3% and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases,” reads the alert.
The institute also reported an increase of 459 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.
Vaccine distribution issues irk elderly Gqeberha residents
About 100 people, many elderly, were left frustrated on Friday when health officials failed to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to the Govan Mbeki Community Hall in Gqeberha.
People GroundUp spoke to said there had been a shortage of vaccines at the site the whole week.
They waited for vaccines from 7am, and not a single health official had arrived. Volunteers at the site phoned health officials to find out what was happening. They were promised the vaccines would be delivered by 1pm.
At 12:30pm they were told to go home.
