Over-18s drive up SA's vaccination numbers, as 14,300 new cases are recorded on Friday

On the first day that over-18s were allowed to register and receive their Covid-19 vaccines, nearly 250,000 shots were administered across SA.

This is significantly higher than in recent weeks, when government officials expressed concern at the apparent slowing demand for the vaccines.

According to figures released on Friday, there were 248,873 jabs administered by 5pm on Friday — over 57,000 more than administered the day before. Of the jabs on Friday, the most were in Gauteng (71,462), followed by the Western Cape (53,290) and KwaZulu-Natal (40,198).

To date, 10,431,124 vaccines have been administered across SA.

Also on Friday, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), announced that there were 14,312 new Covid-19 cases identified in SA in the prior 24 hours, meaning that 2,666,964 infections have been recorded to date.

There were also another 289 Covid-19 related deaths recorded, taking the total number of fatalities to 78,983 across SA since the outbreak of the virus last year.

Of the new infections, for the second day in a row KwaZulu-Natal recorded the highest number of cases (4,198), followed by the Western Cape (3,828), the Eastern Cape (1,694) and Gauteng (1,468)

The NICD said there were also 605 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, meaning that there are currently 13,800 people being treated for Covid-19 related illnesses in SA's hospitals.

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