EVEN AS South Africa eases its coronavirus lockdown, infection numbers have started to rise quickly and President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday he was particularly concerned about the Western Cape.
Western Cape has become the country’s main coronavirus hotspot, with around two-thirds of the country’s total 40,792 cases. It has also recorded 651 out of the country’s total of 848 deaths.
South Africa recorded its largest daily jump of cases on Thursday, with 3,267 new cases.
Ramaphosa visited Cape Town on Friday to be briefed on efforts to tackle the virus, including the opening of a new temporary field hospital for mild to moderately sick patients.
“The Western Cape is the epicentre for COVID-19 infections and this concerns us deeply,” he said.
The government is expecting an escalation of cases ahead of a predicted August-September peak and rising community infection rates in densely-packed poor townships. But it is struggling with shortages of test kits, healthcare staff and hospital beds.
“We must increase the number of beds … It’s better to over provide than to under provide because the worst is still to come,” Ramaphosa said.
Minister of Health Dr Zweli Mkhize, who was in the province with Ramaphosa on Friday to assess the progress in setting up COVID-19 interventions, said various strategies have been put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections in the Western Cape
“There is a lot of integration of strategies and approaches into the issues that have been raised. We have focused on our hotspot strategy; the issue of sub-division of districts into sub-districts for more intensive interventions,” Mkhize said.
“We have already sent the team of Cuban specialists to come assist in the Western Cape. We have about 28 of them in this province. There have been other additional reinforcements. We need to push to up to 30,000 beds. The focus has got to be on those who have turned positive in the past two weeks; that’s where the large source of infection is coming from,” he said.
“We are not only dealing with positive cases; we are also dealing with the contacts. This is the area where we believe we are going to make a concerted effort to break the cycle of infection.”
(Compiled by Inside Politics staff and news agencies)
