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A kid is surrounded by sponge cushions arsenic she plays astatine a Johannesburg buying promenade Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

JOHANNESBURG – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to enactment pursuing a week of isolation aft investigating affirmative for COVID-19, his bureau announced Monday.

Ramaphosa had mild symptoms and was treated astatine his authoritative residence successful Cape Town by South Africa's subject wellness work arsenic the state battled a question of the microorganism dominated by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

“President Ramaphosa repeats his telephone for everyone successful the state to enactment harmless by being vaccinated, wearing look masks, washing oregon sanitizing hands frequently, maintaining a societal region and avoiding gatherings,” his bureau said successful a statement.

Ramaphosa is acceptable to seat the past furniture gathering of the twelvemonth connected Wednesday this week, the connection said.

In the past 24 hours, South Africa has reported 15,465 caller COVID-19 infections and 3 deaths. South Africa's 7-day rolling mean of regular caller cases has risen implicit the past 2 weeks from 16.9 caller cases per 100,000 radical connected Dec. 5 to 33.8 caller cases per 100,000 radical connected Dec. 19.

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Although South Africa's caller confirmed cases of COVID-19 person surged since mid-November, the numbers of those hospitalized and those who person died person not followed the aforesaid upward trajectory.

As the state approaches the vacation season, during which galore industries adjacent and determination is wide question to sojourn families, the vaccination thrust appears to person stalled.

South Africa has administered implicit 27 cardinal vaccine doses truthful that much than 38% of its big colonisation has been vaccinated, according to authoritative statistics. The state has an estimated 19 cardinal doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but the gait of vaccinations has dropped drastically from an mean of astir 120,000 per time successful November to little than 20,000 per time past week. Just implicit 5,000 jabs were fixed successful the past 24 hours. South Africa's people of vaccinating 70% of its colonisation by the extremity of the twelvemonth appears unattainable.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.