By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD),reports 2,489 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,637,673.
The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng (38%), followed by Western Cape (17%). Kwa-Zulu Natal accounted for 14%; Mpumalanga accounted for 9%; Limpopo and North West each accounted for 6% respectively; Free State accounted for 5%; Eastern Cape accounted for 3%; and Northern Cape accounted for 2% of today’s new cases.
This increase represents a 7.6% positivity rate.
The proportion of positive new cases/total new tested today is 7.6%, which is lower than yesterday (8.7%). The 7-day average is 8.3% today, which is lower than yesterday (8.5%).
Due to the ongoing audit exercise by the National Department of Health (NDoH), there may be a backlog of COVID-19 mortality cases reported. Today, the NDoH reports 134 deaths and of these, 9 occurred in the past 24 – 48 hours. This brings the total fatalities to 96,985 to date.
Meanwhile South Africa’s efforts to produce vaccines are key to helping the African continent become more self-sufficient in inoculations to combat COVID-19 and many other diseases, the visiting chief of the World Health Organization said Friday.
“More than half of the world’s population is now fully vaccinated, and yet 84% of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose,” Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing.
Tedros added there was an “urgent need” to increase local production of vaccines in low and middle-income countries.
He was also scheduled to visit the Afrigen lab that, with support from the WHO, is creating a COVID-19 vaccine from scratch.
The laboratory is replicating the Moderna vaccine using mRNA vaccine technology.
The Afrigen facility has backing from WHO and several other partners including the governments of South Africa, France and Belgium.
The initiative is also supported by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tedros said it is expected that clinical trials for the vaccine candidate developed by Afrigen would start in 2022 and it is hoped that approval for its use will be granted in 2024.
WHO chief scientist, Doctor Soumaya Swaminathan, has lauded the brisk pace scientists are working.
“This is a testament to the scientific capability in Africa and South Africa that this has happened so quickly and we are very confident, all the partners on board, that this can be expanded,” she said.
Messenger RNA vaccines uses a genetic code to illicit an immune response in people inoculated with the coronavirus jab.
The global hubs will act as training facilities where technology is established at industrial scale and clinical development performed. WHO will compliment this activity and assist other countries in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries to strengthen biomanufacturing capacity as well as regulatory capacity.