The Department of Health says close to 35% of the country’s adult population has received the Johnson & Johnson single-shot Covid-19 vaccine or at least one dose of the Pfizer jab.

More than 19.6 million doses have been administered since the beginning of the vaccine rollout in February this year, with close to 200 000 of these administered on Wednesday.

As of today, the Western Cape is leading the vaccination race with 43% adults having received at least one dose. The Eastern Cape closely follows with 39.8%, Limpopo with 39.7% and the Free State with 39.38%, Mpumalanga is at the all-time low level with 27.9%, the country’s lab-confirmed cases sit at 2 913 880.

“This increase represents a 2.4% positivity rate,” the institute said, adding that there has been an increase of 70 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours,” said the department. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 37 more people succumbed to the disease, pushing the death toll to 88 466 since the outbreak.

Globally, more than 238 million cases have been recorded with more than 4 million deaths. According to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological update, the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths has continued to decline since late August,

And over 2.8 million new cases and over 46 000 new deaths were reported during the week of 4 to 10 October 2021, representing a 7% and 10% decrease respectively, as compared to the previous week. the department added.

The WHO confirmed that The Delta variant remains the dominant variant across the world and that the variant has been reported across in 191 countries Globally, “no new countries, territories or areas reported cases with variants of concern in the past week,” said the department.