Why South Africa can’t take strict lockdown steps – expert

President Cyril Ramaphosa is between a rock and a hard place as he seeks to tighten Covid-19 regulations as South Africa was swamped by 118 735 new infections since 20 June. Announcing tighter lockdown restrictions now is like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.

And the economy would not tolerate another beating, said economic analyst Mike Schussler.

“This time around there is no Temporary Employment Relief Scheme [Ters] money, so it would make no sense to implement a month or two-month disaster relief because it would be three or four billion a month and we could rather spend that money on vaccines,” Schussler said.

“I know many a business which have used their reserves to overcome this.”

Schussler said they were still struggling to get ahead but if travel were restricted, airlines, as well as the hotel and restaurant industries, would take another knock.

“I would suggest making the school holidays two weeks earlier, halve the number of people allowed in a room, don’t forget the train tracks were stolen in the first lockdown, the minute you lockdown you had better have police watching [infrastructure].”

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As South Africa’s most populous province, Gauteng has the dubious honour of leading the pack when it came to the increase in Covid-19 infections. And yet, of the more than 15 million people living in Gauteng, according to Stats SA, only 626 461 people – little more than 4% – had been vaccinated as of Friday, according to a statement by the Gauteng provincial government.

As of Thursday, only 588 727 people had registered on the Electronic Vaccination Data System, in a province that registered11 303 new infections on Saturday compared to 17 985 new cases for the entire country. According to South African National Blood services’ medical director Dr Karin van den Berg, part of the reason for Gauteng escaping in large part the first and second waves could have been due to lockdown regulations.

“Interestingly, we saw comparatively low antibody levels among donors who presented in Gauteng as compared to other provinces, especially when you consider population density,” Van den Bergh said in a statement yesterday. Preliminary results were released yesterday from the analysis of new data from a survey of blood donors in all provinces.

“The results could indicate Gauteng was more insulated from the initial waves of the virus and may in part explain the devastating spread of the virus through Gauteng,” said Van Den Bergh. “However, the role of the different variants, especially the Delta variant, must also be considered. Further investigation would be required to fully explain the dynamics of the third wave.”