South Africa’s COVID-19 death toll has now crossed the 90 000 mark after 27 more people lost their lives to the virus on Tuesday.
The reported 27 deaths bring the total number of deaths to 90 002.
Meanwhile, 52 890 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, with 13 147 new cases, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.
According to the NICD, Gauteng remains the epicentre with 8 445 new infections reported. It is followed by 1 396 cases in KwaZulu-Natal, 805 in the Western Cape and 720 in the North West, representing a 24.9% positivity rate.
This means there is now a caseload of 3 051 222 since the outbreak.
In addition, the Department of Health announced that 140 281 vaccine doses were given since the last reporting cycle, of which 29 965 were administered to children.
The latest distributed vaccines take the total to 26 639 293, while the country is now home to 14 908 420 or 37.2% fully jabbed adults.
Meanwhile, the number of adolescents who have taken the first jab of the Pfizer vaccine has now increased to 652 197.
Globally, as of 7 December 2021, there have been 265 713 467 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5 260 888 deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Global view
According to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update, the case incidence plateaued between 29 November and 5 December, with over four million confirmed new cases reported, similar to the number reported in the previous week’s figures.
However, new weekly deaths increased by 10% as compared to the previous week, with over 52 500 additional fatalities reported.
Africa and the region of the Americas recorded increases in new weekly cases of 79% and 21%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions both logged decreases of 10%.
In addition, new weekly cases reported by the European and Eastern Mediterranean regions were similar to the numbers reported in the previous week.
New weekly deaths peaked by 49% in the South-East Asia region and 38% in the Americas, while the weekly deaths dipped in the African and Eastern Mediterranean regions by 13% and 8%, respectively.
“The number of new deaths was similar to those reported in the previous week in both the European and the Western Pacific regions,” the WHO added.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (752 394 new cases a 30% increase), Germany (396 429 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures), the United Kingdom (310 696 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures), France (283 500 new cases, a 49% increase) and Russia (231 240 new cases, similar to the previous week’s figures).
At present, the WHO said the Omicron variant cases have been reported in 57 countries across all the agency’s regions.
“While most of the cases identified in these countries are currently travel‐related, this may change as more information becomes available,” it said.
Of 899 935 sequences uploaded to GISAID with specimens collected in the last 60 days, 897 886 (99.8%) were Delta, 713 (0.1%) were Omicron, 286 (less than 0.1%) Gamma, 154 (less than 0.1%) Alpha, 64 (less than 0.1%) Beta and less than 0.1% comprised other circulating variants including Mu and Lambda.
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