Ten things you need to know about the current state of Covid-19 in SA

Health Minister Joe Phaahla gave some feedback regarding the current state of Covid-19 in SA during a virtual media briefing on Friday morning. 

Let’s look a the top ten things you need to know: 

• SA is steadily getting out of the grip of the third wave driven by the Delta variant. 
• Nationally there has been a 24% drop in new cases compared to 7 days before.
• Hospitalization over the seven days has also gone down by 10%
•  The positivity rate has come down from the highest level of 35% in mid-July to 12% yesterday (Thursday). 
• The vaccination campaign is maintaining a steady momentum, but it needs to gather more speed.
• The total dose administered reached 14 367 151 yesterday, with 10 510 378 individuals vaccinated with at least one dose constituting 26,41% of the adult population and 7 021 256 people were fully vaccinated which is 17,64% of all adults. 
• 18m more adults need to be vaccinated to achieve 70% coverage of all adults with at least one dose by December. 
• There is a self-booking feature on the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS). You can select a date, time, and vaccination site of your choice. Click here to book your slot. 
• There is no vaccination passport in SA yet, which is required by some counties for international travel. In our case we still require only a less than 72hours PCR COVID-19 test for traveling. 
• The development of a digital vaccination certificate to confirm that a person has been vaccinated has begun. The certificate will be protected from fraud and can be uploaded on your smartphone, and is printable. 

Regulations could be eased by the end of the week, as our COVID-19 data continues to show promising signs – and a move to Level 2 is looking more and more likely each day.

ALSO READ: South Africans will receive ‘digital vaccination certificates’ from next week

The Bureau of Economic Research (BER) earlier said that ‘positive trends’ were likely to lead to a loosening of the current regulations.

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