On 14 October 2020 minister of co-operative governance Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma extended the state of disaster to November 15.
It gives the government unchecked power to make arbitrary regulations to stop the spread of Covid-19, even as the virus continues to recede sharply.
But did the lockdown that was imposed in terms of the state of disaster even work to stop the spread of the virus?
As Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma extends the lockdown to 15 November, a number of analyses show that while causing economic misery, the lockdown didn’t stop the increase in cases of the disease.
Actuary Barry Childs, who led the official Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) modelling group on Covid-19, said at the 2020 Assa convention that though one might have expected the lockdown to slow the disease, and opening up the Western Cape economy to increase infections, the “exact opposite” took place.
Using Google mobility data, Childs pointed out that as the lockdown became less strict and movement between people increased, Covid-19 infections fell.
“As levels were lessened, just as there was more and more pressure from society at large to get back to ‘normal’… the curve turned down,” he said.
On being on asked why the cases started dropping in that province he said “If you put a lot of reliance on lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions as the reason for turning the curve … we saw the exact opposite. We saw, as the levels of lockdown and stringencies were being lightened, the curve was flattening.”
Even though SA had one of the most stringent lockdowns in the world, it was precisely during level 4 and 5 that the epidemic grew at the fastest pace, he says.