Cape Town - Those aged 50 years and older have accounted for 68% of hospital admissions and 87% of Covid-19 related deaths in the province during the third wave.
Provincial health officials, during their weekly briefing, on Thursday said this was the reason it remained essential that those in the 50 plus age group get vaccinated as soon as possible.
“Please do not wait for your second SMS. Please walk-in as soon as possible to get your first dose of your Covid-19 vaccine,” Premier Alan Winde said.
Meanwhile, health head Dr Keith Cloete said they were seeing an average of 3 100 new Covid-19 diagnoses a day.
“There are currently 44 506 active infectious cases. This is 5 228 more active cases (13%) in the last week. The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 at gatherings therefore remains very high due to the high number of active cases,” he said.
Admissions and deaths have remained level with around 335 new admissions and around 108 deaths each day, Cloete said.
He added that the forecast for the coming week has stabilised, and they were “predicting a very modest increase in cases for next week”.
Currently there are 3 665 Covid patients in acute hospitals (2 069 in public hospitals and 1 596 in private hospitals) and the combined public-private oxygen utilisation is now 76.99 tons/day (102.6% of the maximal production capacity of 75 tons/day) at the Afrox Western Cape plant.
To date, the province has administered 1 393 818 vaccines, of which 528 485 people are fully vaccinated. This includes healthcare workers and those vaccinated as part of the mass vaccination programme.
“We are also receiving additional vaccine supply which can enable us to administer up to 200 000 vaccines a week from the end of August. We anticipate that we will receive an allocation of 287 000 doses of Pfizer and 28 800 J&J doses tomorrow (Saturday) for delivery to vaccination sites in the following week,” added Winde.
Cape Times