NATIONAL NEWS - Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has updated the confirmed number of Covid-19 infections to 709, a 28% increase from Tuesday.

The Free State jumped because of 50 cases from a Free State church.

On Tuesday, the figure was at 554, suggesting the country has been battling “community infection”, the point at which the outbreak becomes particularly difficult to contain without drastic measures.

A full nationwide lockdown comes into effect at midnight on Thursday, with South Africans only allowed to exit their homes for limited reasons, and only a specified group of essential workers allowed to move about for specified work reasons.

Dr Mkhize said on Tuesday that the priority was to flatten the infection curve; people should not have a false sense of reassurance that the lockdown would make anyone any safer. People still needed to wash their hands and take all the same precautions individually to prevent the spread.

He warned that numbers would continue to increase, but the infection rate would hopefully start to come down within two to three weeks.

“We are trying to freeze the movement of the virus. In the next week or two, the numbers will have grown by three or four times or so. We mustn’t be shocked when we see them increase. But it won’t happen tomorrow or next week.”

A turnaround would take “a couple of weeks”.

Containing everyone for 21 days would allow people to prevent the spread of the virus to others if they were infected.

“We will thereafter engage the public to give further details and explanations on the results including the significant rise, the ongoing testing processes, each province’s progress on contact tracing efforts,” said Mkhize.

Source: Caxton publication, The Citizen