The US and South African medicines regulators have faced legal challenges regarding information used to review and approve Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. (Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
South Africa may well be entering the fourth wave of Covid-19 after recording 11 535 new cases nationally on Thursday, according to an epidemiologist and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).Â
This was a huge spike in numbers compared to Wednesday, which saw over 8500 cases recorded.
Gauteng seems to have entered its fourth wave earlier than all other provinces – much like it did in the third wave – as it was responsible for 8280 cases alone on Tuesday.
According to the NICD, there were 274 new hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of current Covid-19 admissions to 2 550. Twenty-eight deaths were recorded in this period, bringing the confirmed death toll to 89 871.
The NICD showed that the country’s numbers on Wednesday indicate a 22.4% positivity rate among the 51 402 tests carried out in the past 24 hours.
President Cyril Ramaphosa urged South Africans to get vaccinated when he made his latest address to the nation on Sunday, but the government is still falling short of its target of vaccinating 300 000 people a day.
To date, 14 396 445 adults are fully vaccinated while 510 255 children have received one vaccine dose.
*This story has been updated to reflect the figures of 2 December 2021