Covid-19 weekly round-up: Gauteng driving uptick in Covid-19 cases

The Gauteng province has been driving the increasing number of Covid-19 cases during the start of the third wave in the country.

The majority of new cases for the past few days have been from Gauteng with 63%, followed by the Western Cape with 11% and North West with 6% provinces, this according to the national institute for communicable diseases.

Acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said during a visit to the province that an intervention team will assist the province to deal with its third wave which is considerably higher than other provinces.

Meanwhile in the Western Cape, health officials said that Covid-19 case numbers have been increasing by an average of 430 new cases each day – about a 31% increase week-on-week.

South Africa has officially entered its third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases confirmed last week that the country’s seven-day moving average exceeded the threshold as defined by the ministerial advisory committee.

According to the MAC advisory, the new wave seven-day moving average threshold is 30% of the peak incidence of the previous wave.

Gauteng has been the biggest contributor to new cases, accounting for 61% of infections followed by the Western Cape with 10% and both the Free State and the North West with 6%.

Health expert, Professor Salim Abdool Karim says the country should expect the numbers to go even higher in the coming weeks.
He said the real current rate of infections is probably twice what is being reported and that the latest data is actually a reflection of what happened well over a week ago.

2 million J&J vaccines from Gqeberha will no longer be used

Around two million Johnson & Johnson vaccines at the Gqeberha plant will no longer be used according to Acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane.

This comes after the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) said last week that Johnson & Johnson should throw away millions of its Covid-19 vaccines due to contamination.

Problems at a Baltimore factory in the US led to federal regulators advising that around 60 million vaccines should be discarded.
However, several other millions have been cleared for use.

An FDA report found that the manufacturing rooms and corridors at the Emergent BioSolutions production plant, where key vaccine ingredients are made, had not been cleaned and were unsanitary.

The Department of Health said that there are 300 000 doses cleared to be shipped to South Africa as a matter of urgency.

Keep an eye out next week for another roundup of the top Covid-19 stories.

kelly.turner@africannewsagency.com