Over 1,500 new COVID-19 cases were recorded in South Africa over the past 24 hours.

This brought the number of the country’s total infection rate to over 1, 528,000.

The number of daily fatalities reported in the past day was 82, bringing the number of deaths to 51,261.

The recovery rate stood at 95%, meaning over 1.4 million people have recuperated.

Meanwhile, 145 544 health workers had been given the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday approved Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, after already authorising the jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca.

“Every new, safe and effective tool against COVID-19 is another step closer to controlling the pandemic,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The news comes after the single-dose jab won approval from the European Union on Thursday.