South Africa has vaccinated 22,799,682 people with the Covid-19 vaccine since March this year, with 158,787 of these jabs were administered on Wednesday, the health ministry said on Thursday.
Some 145,828 injections were given to adults, while 12,959 jabs were received by children aged between 12 and 17 years old, the ministry said.
The country now has 12,620,892 Covid-19 fully-vaccinated adults out of the 40 million the government has targeted to achieve herd immunity against the pandemic, the office said.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) recorded 344 new Covid-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 2,922,735.
The majority of the new cases were recorded in Gauteng province after 140 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus, the NICD said.
Another 44 cases were reported in the Western Cape, 41 in KwaZulu-Natal, 35 in Free State, 28 in the North West and 22 cases in the Eastern Cape province — while the rest of the provinces recorded less than 20 cases each, it said.
Meanwhile, 23 patients succumbed to the respiratory disease, pushing the death toll to 89,220 since March 2020 when disease broke out in the country, the NICD said.
Hospital admissions increased by 37 patients on Wednesday, the NICD said.
NM/jn/APA