South Africa today announced the approval of the Chinese lab Sinovac’s Coronavac vaccine amid a third wave of covid-19 driven by the Delta variant and which is causing record infections.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is seeking to accelerate vaccination after nearly five months of very slow progress.
Until now, that southern African country, which is the epicenter of the pandemic on the African continent, had approved only the vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, but the national drug regulator announced today the approval for emergency use of the Coronavac vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac.
According to the latest data, published Friday night by health authorities, South Africa has already surpassed the two million case threshold, having registered 24,270 new infections on Friday, the largest single-day increase since the pandemic began.
The total number of deaths in South Africa is 61,332 and the most affected area is by far the Gauteng province – where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located – concentrating most cases and maintaining a critical hospital situation.
The Delta variant is present in 13 African countries and its expansion is causing contagions to skyrocket, with much more critical health situations than those recorded in the past.
Despite the current complicated health situation, vaccination is progressing very slowly in the region, where just over 1% of the inhabitants have the complete immunization scheme.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 3,957,862 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 182.5 million cases of infection, according to the most recent count by the French agency AFP.
