DURBAN - South Africa has made some traction in its goal of vaccinating at least 12 million people by December – about 20% of the country’s population.
The Health Department issued a banner thanking South Africa as its Covid-19 vaccine rollout programme reached a milestone of over 8.1 million vaccinations yesterday.
The current population of SA is 60 123 146 as of Thursday, August 5, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.
According to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), infectious diseases spread easily, and entire communities can rapidly become infected. If a high percentage of the community is vaccinated, it is difficult for the disease to spread.
This is known as “herd immunity" and is especially crucial for those most vulnerable, who are unable to receive certain vaccines. This includes infants, those undergoing certain medical treatments for instance cancer, and those suffering from health conditions that impair the function of their immune system, including HIV.
AfroCentric’s Medscheme, one of SA’s largest medical scheme administrators, and the administrators of schemes such as Bonitas, Fedhealth, POLMED, the SABC and Nedgroup Medical Aid, shared data on the country’s performance with the Covid-19 pandemic containment.
It said Covid-19 admissions have reduced in Gauteng, but they continued to see an increase of cases and hospital admissions in the Western Cape.
“Afrocentric substantial increases in both cumulative Covid-19 positive hospital admissions and Covid-19 positive cumulative deaths this week, which it said was most likely as a consequence of reporting delays due to civil unrest in the week of July 12, 2021.
“Covid-19 admissions have reduced in Gauteng, but in Western Cape, hospital admissions have not peaked yet – bearing in mind that we expect that additional admissions will still be reported for recent weeks.”
THE MERCURY