The surge in infection has stretched South Africa's health services to verge of collapse , with hospitals out of beds and medics to man them, and made the govt to impose partial lockdown restrictions.
The number of individuals diagnosed with Covid-19 in South Africa has surpassed two million-mark, and 61,500 people have died, the national Department of Health said. the govt data also showed that 3.3 million people - about 5% of the population - has been vaccinated.
More than 1.7 million people have recovered from Covid-19 in South Africa since the beginning of the outbreak.
The low vaccination rate has resulted from a mix of bad luck and bureaucratic failures. the govt had to destroy 2 million contaminated Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses earlier this year, while efforts to exchange them have run up against global supply bottlenecks.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has criticised what he called global "vaccine apartheid," with rich countries with plentiful vaccine supplies hoarding them while poorer countries wait.
To tackle this problem, South Africa on Saturday approved China's Sinovac vaccine against Covid-19, as growing evidence emerges of its effectiveness.
The surge in infection in South Africa is driven by the delta variant of the coronavirus. This was indicated by the country's acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane last week.
The current resurgence might be worse than the second wave, the minister had said.
The South African government is expecting that the height of the third wave would surpass that of the second wave in January.
