“The continuation of the lockdown in the way it was imposed was no longer sustainable”. This was said by Minister of Health, Dr Zwelini Mkhize, when he was joined by members of the Ministerial Advisory Committee, senior officials from the Department of Health and the leadership of various health entities, at a press briefing on May 29 regarding Covid-19 health interventions ahead of the country’s move to alert level three.
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Mkhize used the opportunity to answer a number of pressing questions around the coronavirus outbreak in South Africa.
He indicated that his department had received a number of requests for additional information around the demographics of the infection numbers.
“Some of the information is not available in the sense that it was not collected,” he said.
He added that the department had “a lot of work to do” in reconciling the data.
The Minister also said that he had received queries about why the daily released stats do not exclude the number of recoveries to only show the number of active infections.
“That is the standard way the coronavirus records have been kept throughout the world.
“For standardisation purposes it is important to keep the total number even if people fall under the category of resolved,” he said
Resolved cases include those who have recovered and those who have died.
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“Active cases would be the difference between the total number of cases and the number of cases we call resolved. This is the standard way this matter is dealt with,” he said.
He said South Africa’s coronavirus fight was a unique situation.
“We are dealing with a much more complex situation,” he said. He said that it was necessary to impose the lockdown immediately after the confirmation of reported cases in South Africa.
Although the infection rate continues to increase the Minister said other considerations had to be taken into account.
“There are issues of hunger, social distress and income challenges. All of these issues are very serious,” he said.
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“While we wanted to make sure we slow the infection rate we also don’t want people to have a problem where they can no longer survive.
“Continuation of the lockdown in the way it was imposed was no longer sustainable.
“We need to accept the reality now. The reality is that Covid-19 as a disease is going to be with us for a year or two, or more. We need to begin to adjust to a new reality of how we are going to live.”
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He said that government was advocating for a behavioural change to defeat Covid-19.
“This is a social issue. It’s not just what the doctors and nurses will do, it’s what society will do,” he said.
He added that 50 per cent of the national deaths were recorded in the last two weeks.
The minister also highlighted that one of the challenges experienced was the test backlog.
“We have done over 655 000 tests,” he said.
Speaking about the high number of cases in the Western Cape, Mkhize said while the province accounts for around 65 per cent of the national total, the number of tests done in the province accounted for around 23 per cent.
Prof Abdool Karim, chairperson of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Covid-19, said the purpose of the lockdown was to flatten the curve.
He said by flatting the curve the infection rate would be reduced to a level at which hospitals can cope.
The purpose of the lockdown was also to avoid a surge in new infections.
He said the lockdown period allowed government to slow down the rate of community transmissions, as well as give the government time to expand its healthcare capacity.
“It is difficult to stop the spread of the virus,” he said.
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He listed a number of reasons for this, including that those infected could spread the virus for days before they become symptomatic.
He also stated that the virus has a rapid spread rate and each person could infect up to two others and that it had been associated with what is called super-spreading events.
“Eighty-six countries used lockdowns against Covid-19,” he said.
Karim explained the spread of the virus in a term called doubling time.
This means the number of days it takes for the number of infections to double.
He said in the three weeks before the lockdown the number of cases was doubling every two days.
“During lockdown the doubling time diminished greatly to roughly once every two weeks,” he said.
As the easing of lockdown was implemented the doubling time increased again.
It currently stands at around 12 days.
“South Africa has made progress in scaling up testing,” he said.
Karim added that there are a number of challenges which includes getting enough tests and as such the prioritisation of testing was implemented to hospital patients, healthcare workers and areas of outbreaks.
“We have a different scenario in the Western Cape than what we have in the rest of the country.
“The Western Cape is dealing with an epidemic that is growing rapidly. The rest of the country is dealing with an epidemic that is at a low simmering level,” he said.
He said the Western Cape’s doubling time is currently standing at nine days while in Gauteng the doubling time stands at 24 days.
Doubling time for KwaZulu-Natal is 26 days and the Eastern Cape stands at 12 days.
Karim said in the last days of lockdown at level five, outbreaks were identified in grocery stores and supermarkets.
“This was suggestive that outbreaks were accompanied by super-spreading events,” he said.
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