SOUTH AFRICA - NATIONAL LOCKDOWN ON THE HORIZON AS CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS CONTINUE TO RISE

IN A MATTER of days, South Africans could be facing a national lockdown if the number of confirmed coronavirus infections continue to rise.

The concern is that there could be more community infections that have not been detected because of how testing for the virus is carried out.

South Africa could be joining the likes of Italy and France if the measures outlined by President Cyril Ramaphosa don’t curb the rise in infections.

On Friday, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced that 202 South Africans were infected with the virus, a jump of 50 from the day before.

“This is nearly a doubling of the previous day’s number and that is indicative of a growing outbreak,” said Professor Alex van der Heever, chairperson of Social Security Systems Administration and Management studies, at Wits School of Governance.

“The problem has been the bias in the testing process, in that they’ve been turning people away if they didn’t fit the criteria. I believe that is a serious error of judgement and we are essentially turning a blind eye to possible community-based infections.”

China, Van der Heever said, began its big lockdown when it saw rapid escalations of between 400 and 500 new cases a day.

“And we could, depending on our own numbers, be four days away from that,” said Van der Heever. “But if we were seeing community-based infections of 100 to 200 per day, we would probably have to escalate the prevention strategy.”

Bruce Mellado, professor of physics at Wits University and senior scientist at iThemba LABS and his team have been analysing big data to understand trends in the spread of the coronavirus.

“The bottom line is that the situation is very serious. The spread of the virus will continue for as long as people don’t pay attention to the recommendations of the government.

“The problem here is that if the population doesn’t respect the recommendations issued by the government, the virus will spread and become massive.

“There’s no question about it. The numbers are very clear. And even in those countries that have some level of measures, the spread is very fast.”

This comes as five people who attended a church in Free State tested positive. The five were tourists, but the Department of Health was preparing to test almost 600 people.

So far, Van der Heever said, the measures introduced were good in preventing the spread of the virus, including the closing of schools and universities. School children have been seen in the past as being drivers of flu infections.

But while Mkhize said there was a chance that 70% of South Africans would become infected with the coronavirus, Van der Heever pointed out that this would likely happen only if no measures were put in place to combat the pandemic.

Department of Health spokesman Popo Maja said if a national lockdown happened, it would be announced by the minister of health or the president.

“We are guided by the case definition as is contained in the International.

via - IOL