The spike in COVID-19 cases has prompted speculation of tighter lockdown restrictions being implemented any day from now. When President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Sunday, he announced that South Africa would stay under level 1 of the lockdown – but said the situation would be reviewed in a week.
“We will then need to determine whether the existing measures are adequate or whether changes need to be made to the current regulations. We have started the process of amending our health regulations so that we can review the use of the Disaster Management Act to manage our response to the pandemic, with a view to ultimately lifting the National State of Disaster,” Ramaphosa said at the time.
While it’s nowhere near a week, the COVID-19 figures are on the rise – the latest show that over 8 500 new cases were picked up on Wednesday. If history has taught us anything it’s that nothing is set in stone, especially in how government handles the pandemic. This is partly why many have reckoned that Ramaphosa could impose tighter lockdown restrictions on us much sooner than we would expect him to.
Harder lockdown: Here’s what a government advisor says
According to Professor Kholeka Mlisana, the co-chairperson of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, despite the dramatic hike in cases, it is still too early to tell whether enforcing tougher lockdown restrictions would be warranted.
“We continue to see the increase in numbers, especially in Gauteng. What we are seeing is that there is a different spectrum that we are seeing in that the majority of infections is from the younger age groups, which we had not been seeing before,” Mlisana said on eNCA.
She says for now, they don’t have enough data to analyse the severity of the latest COVID-19 infections.
“We are still watching this. We want to have it documented, the number of hospital admissions and which wards are being affected and whilst at the same time, the provinces need to make sure that the resurgence plans that are already in place, they now need to start kicking in so that they can be ready for the increase that we are seeing in admissions”
Professor Kholeka Mlisana, the co-chairperson of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19
from The South African https://ift.tt/3rpg56N
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