South Africa’s cabinet has approved the extension of the National State of Disaster to October this year as the country hit another milestone on Thursday after passing the 13-million vaccine doses mark in its fight against coronavirus.
Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele said on Thursday that the country would remain in Level 3 of the lockdown of the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic until 15 October.
South Africa has been under an adjusted Level 3 Covid-19 lockdown since the end of July under which all economic activities are allowed, with some exceptions.
During this stage, alcohol is sold for domestic consumption and on specified days only, while sales of tobacco products remains prohibited.
South Africa administered 250,843 doses on Thursday, pushing the figure to 13,112.268 people who have been vaccinated, the Department of Health said.
The department said the number of adults fully vaccinated now stood at 6,301,758 from the above number.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the total number of cases is now 2,796,405 after 9,203 new infections were recorded on Thursday.
The NICD said the KwaZulu-Natal continued to drive the high number of new infections, after 2,691 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus in the province.
The province was followed by 1,796 cases in the Western Cape, and 1,652 in the Eastern Cape Provinces, it said, adding that “there has been an increase of 437 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.”
Unfortunately, some 418 people died from Covid-19 on Thursday, raising the death toll in the country to 82,914 fatalities since March 2020, the NICD said.
NM/jn/APA