South Africa considers local lockdown restrictions coronavirus hotspots

 

City of Cape Town Foreshore Image source: 123rf

The Western Cape government is considering local lockdown restrictions to slow down the spread of the coronavirus in hotspot areas.

The province issued a ‘resurgence’ warning on Wednesday as the number of active cases have increased substantially week-on-week.

Over the last week alone, the province has witnessed a 52.1% jump in new cases, with an established pattern seen over time, it said.

The provincial head of Health, Doctor Keith Cloete, said that one of the only measures available to the Western Cape is if encourages public behaviour to change drastically.

“We will have to look (at) and explore local restrictions. If people do not behave in a way that will help us, we might have to become much more tough in the way that we impose restrictions locally in the Western Cape,” he said.

Cloete said that his team has made a recommendation to cabinet with a special team set up by Premier Alan Winde set to meet on Friday to discuss the specifics of these restrictions.

He said that there will be more clarity by next week on exactly what these restrictions will be.

“The premier and the cabinet have agreed that in the face of these increasing infections it would be the responsible thing to do to consider all the possibilities that can be done locally with municipalities and explore the appropriate application of restrictions in the coming weeks and months.”

Commenting on further restrictions, Winde said that the province cannot to go back into another hard lockdown due to the immense damage done to the local economy.

He added that law enforcement raids and liquor inspections will be increased over the coming weeks in places where people are not adhering to the rules.

One of the possible considerations is limitations of movement between hotspot areas. “Right now, there is no mechanism to close down a border but that is what we will talk about on Friday,” he said.

As of 25 November, the Western Cape has 7,241 active cases of Covid-19, with a total of 126,362 confirmed cases and 114,548 recoveries.

Nationally there have been 3,250 new cases, taking the total reported to 775,502. Deaths have reached 21,201 – a daily increase of 118. Recovery data was not confirmed due to Gauteng province needing to reconcile its data.

 

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