State to ramp up testing as positive cases surge

With the number of confirmed Covid-19 coronavirus cases in South Africa breaching the 240 mark and set to climb, authorities said they were desperately trying to slow the spread of the virus to avoid swamping the fragile healthcare system.

The proportion of the population that could be infected “can go to about 60%”, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told reporters in Bloemfontein on Friday.

“It doesn’t mean those people are going to die, it doesn’t mean all of them are going to get it at the same time, it doesn’t mean we’ve now got an apocalypse,” he said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the virus a national disaster on March 15, closing schools and some borders, and imposing travel bans on international travellers who recently visited 10 of the hardest-hit nations, including the US, the UK, China and Italy. South Africa has confirmed 240 cases of Covid-19 since the first one was detected on March 5. Two patients have recovered and there haven’t been any fatalities.

Government isn’t considering imposing a state of emergency at this juncture because existing regulations give it sufficient powers to lock down areas or restrict movement, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told reporters in Pretoria this week. Police Minister Bheki Cele said the military would only be deployed to help combat the disease if a state of emergency was declared.

Mkhize said government wanted to increase the number of people being tested to 30 000 a day by the middle of next month, compared with 5 000 a day now.

South Africa’s case count is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The country should prepare for a “difficult” three or four months, Angelique Coetzee, the chairperson of the SA Medical Association, said.

“We are still not in, as people like to call it, the eye of the storm, but we are moving into it,” she said.

Infections have been confirmed in seven of the country’s nine provinces. Gauteng, the economic hub, which has 109 cases, and the Western Cape, which has 56 cases, have been hardest hit.

The authorities are concerned about a widespread outbreak in the central Free State, where five travellers – two from Texas, one from Israel and one from France – attended a church service and subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. The Red Cross was helping track down the church’s 600 congregants and a mobile unit would be dispatched to test them, Mkhize said.

The Eastern Cape has also recorded its first positive Covid-19 case.

Like South Africa, more than 20 African countries this week imposed travel bans or shut their borders altogether, and many have closed schools and banned large gatherings, including religious festivals.

“It’s wise to put these measures in place,” Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organisation’s regional director for Africa, said during a telephone briefing on Thursday. “The earlier, the better.” – Bloomberg

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