South Africa

ORANGE FARM, South Africa (AP) — Spry and gray-haired, many dressed in their Sunday best or colorful African prints — and all sporting masks — dozens of South Africans aged 60 and over gathered at a government health clinic outside Johannesburg to get their COVID-19 shots.

Some looked at vaccine notifications on their mobile phones, others clutched pieces of paper, as the line moved along at a good pace. Eight at a time, they were ushered into a tent where they took seats distanced from each other.

PRETORIA, May 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — South African athletes due to participate in this year’s Tokyo Olympics will receive COVID-19 shots during a vaccination rollout that has so far prioritised the elderly and frontline workers, the country’s medicine authority said.

Tokyo is due to host the Games from July 23 to Aug 8 after they were postponed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

CAPE TOWN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Figures show that South Africa's Western Cape Province, which hosts the legislative capital Cape Town, is moving toward the third wave of COVID-19, a provincial official said on Sunday.

20 May 2021; MEMO: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has told FRANCE 24 that the situation in Gaza reminds him of the apartheid era in his own country. Israeli actions against the Palestinians, he said, evoke memories of the crimes of apartheid committed in South Africa under white rule, adding that while South Africa stands by the Palestinians, he urges both sides to sit down and negotiate.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa has started its mass vaccination drive with the goal of inoculating nearly 5 million citizens aged 60 and above by the end of June.

Shots of the Pfizer vaccine were given to South Africans in a few nursing homes and to some people aged 60 and older on Monday to start the campaign.

So far the country has inoculated just over 478,000 of its health care workers with Johnson & Johnson vaccines and it plans to give the shots to the remainder of its 1.2 million health workers by the end of this week.

JOHANNESBURG, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Eleven cases of COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7 and four of B.1.617.2 variants have been detected in South Africa, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Saturday night.

According to Mkhize, the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa confirmed four cases of the B.1.617.2 variant, which was first detected in India, have been detected in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and all the person had a recent history of travelling from India.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — In countries with historic ties to Britain, allegations by Prince Harry and Meghan that an unnamed member of the royal family had “concerns” over the color of their unborn baby’s skin have raised a thorny question: Do those nations really want to be so closely connected to Britain and its royal family anymore?

PRETORIA, March 6 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — South Africa’s Constitutional Court called on its president to apologise and withdraw pro-Israeli statements made in June, which had caused an outcry in a country strongly committed to the Palestinian cause.

Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng, a devout Christian, again caused a stir in December by calling the coronavirus vaccines “satanic”.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The United States is “gravely concerned by reported atrocities and the overall deteriorating situation” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the toughest statement yet from Washington on Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries, the head of its disease control body said on Thursday.

South Africa and India, which both manufacture drugs and vaccines, made the proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, arguing that intellectual property (IP) rules were hindering the urgent scale-up of vaccine production and provision of medical products to some patients.