Cabinet ministers are to be sent to the Western Cape to boost the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report in the Sunday Times.
The report said the ministers’ duties were as yet unclear, but that Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu confirmed that the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) had decided they should go.
Mthembu said the same would be done for hotspots in other provinces.
The report said Western Cape Premier Alan Winde confirmed the deployment, though said he had not spoken to President Cyril Ramaphosa about the ministers’ mandate and hoped there would be consultation on this before the ministers arrived. Mthembu reportedly claimed the president had consulted the Western Cape government when he met the premier and his executive on Friday.
Some Democratic Alliance (DA) insiders reportedly expressed concerns that the national government was seeking to micromanage the DA-run province, but the report said both Winde and Mthembu denied this, agreeing that politics should not come into play during the fight against Covid-19.
News of the ministerial deployment came as City Press reported that leading health experts warned that the rest of the country should prepare itself for higher rates of infection as it was only a matter of time before other regions reached the surge in cases being registered in the Western Cape.
Yesterday, positive cases rose rose by 2 312 to 48 285 nationally (with 24 364 recoveries), and 45 deaths raised the toll to 998.
The Western Cape has two thirds of all cases, and deaths in the province (774) are far higher than other provinces. The Eastern Cape is next, with 101, followed by KwaZulu-Natal (61) and Gauteng (47).
Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, told City Press that the Eastern Cape should brace itself for a new wave of infections.
‘In two weeks’ time, the Eastern Cape will be where the Western Cape is [in terms of the surge in cases]. Gauteng will be where the Western Cape is in four weeks’ time – and the Western Cape will be three times worse than what it is currently.’
Epidemiologists, as well as experts in infectious diseases and vaccinology, who spoke to City Press this week, all agreed that a change in social behaviour was the only way to halt the increasing speed at which the virus was spreading.
The report also highlighted concerns about the preparedness of the Eastern Cape to deal with the crisis.
It said that as the Covid-19 numbers kept rising in the province, more and more hospital nurses and other health staff were testing positive. This often led to understaffing, placing more pressure on the already under-capacitated hospitals and clinics.
The report said the current state of the province’s hospitals had been highlighted by the closure of Livingstone Hospital’s emergency unit in Port Elizabeth because of a shortage of staff and PPEs, as well as by the shutting down of three units in Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in East London.
On the global level, World Bank president David Malpass has warned that the livelihood of billions will be affected by the pandemic, and the economic fallout could last for a decade. Last month, Malpass said 60 million people could be pushed into ‘extreme poverty’. The bank defined this as living on less than £1.55 per person per day. However, in an interview on Friday, he said that more than 60 million people could find themselves with less than £1 per day to live on.