It has been five months since we declared a national state of disaster to combat to the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the last three weeks, the number of new confirmed cases has dropped from a peak of over 12,000 a day to an average over the past week of around 5,000 a day. It is now clear that had we not acted as swiftly and decisively as we did — and had we not taken the threat as seriously as we did — far more lives would have been lost.When I announced the nationwide lockdown on March 23, it was to prevent a sudden and uncontrolled surge of infections and to prepare our health system adequately.
The progress we are recording in our management of Covid-19 would not be possible without the dedication and professionalism of our doctors, nurses and other health personnel, who have had to confront this unprecedented disease often under extremely difficult conditions. Ultimately, the progress we have made would not have been possible without the sacrifices made by you, the people of SA.
Even the slightest lapse in our alertness at this moment could lead to a resurgence in infections at a rate and on a scale far greater than what we have seen so far. We now know that a large proportion of people who are infected with the virus do not show symptoms and may not even know that they are infected.With this in mind, each one of us should consider ourselves as potentially infected with the virus and continue to behave responsibly so that we do not pass it on to others.
Economic activity will be allowed with the necessary and appropriate stringent health protocols and safety precautions in place.All restrictions on interprovincial travel will be lifted. Infections have been known to take place during family visits, endangering family members and sometimes leading to the deaths of some family members.
With this new phase of our response, we need to put in place the practices and forms of behaviour that we must continue to adopt for some time to come. These include sporting organisations, political parties, trade unions, stokvels, burial societies, women’s groups, small business formations, civic organisations and youth bodies.Alongside basic precautions that all of us can take, we are improving public health capacity so that we can better identify, isolate, test and treat every positive case and trace and quarantine every contact.
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