North West Premier Job Mokgoro has tested positive for Covid-19, a day after the death of the province’s Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs MEC, Gordon Kegakilwe, of Covid-19-related pneumonia.
Mokgoro’s spokesperson, Vuyisile Ngesi, said yesterday the premier was in self-isolation.
‘The premier will therefore continue to discharge his duties, albeit remotely, and has instructed members of the premier’s support staff, who have worked with him closely in the last two weeks to test, while taking the necessary precautions,’ Ngesi said.
MEC Kegakilwe, who died on Monday, had been admitted to the Vryburg Private Hospital with Covid-19-related pneumonia on Sunday afternoon. He was transferred to a Klerksdorp medical facility on Monday morning.
Cumulative cases in Gauteng (71 488, or 33.1% of the national total) have almost caught up with the tally in the Western Cape (668 higher, at 72 156, or 33.4%).
Gauteng also accounted for the highest portion – 75 – of the 192 deaths recorded yesterday. The remaining deaths were recorded in the Western Cape (44), Eastern Cape (36), KwaZulu-Natal (22) and Limpopo (15).
Total deaths in the country come to 3 502. The total of cumulative cases nationally rose by 10 134 to 205 721 (with 102 299 recoveries).
Health24 reported that the Gauteng government said it was ready to deal with the expected increase in coronavirus cases and had not asked the national government to enforce a hard lockdown in the province.
It was, however, suggesting stricter measures, including limited hours for the sale of alcohol and the prohibition of unnecessary social gatherings.
The province’s head of communications, Thabo Masebe, said Gauteng had not, and would not, ask for a return to a Level 4 or 5 lockdown.
Commenting on the string of court victories by the government against lockdown challenges, Professor Thuli Madonsela, the former Public Proctector, said the government ‘may be winning cases in courts of law but not in the court of public opinion’.
She added: ‘The virus is getting the better of us because it has become the people versus the government.’
In other virus-related news
- United States officials said President Donald Trump had formally begun the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organisation, making good on threats over the UN body’s response to the coronavirus;
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took his fourth coronavirus test on Monday after developing Covid-19 symptoms, tested positive for the virus yesterday. Bolsonaro has repeatedly played down the risks posed by the virus, calling it ‘a little flu’. On Monday, he watered down regulations on wearing face masks. Deaths in Brazil rose to more than 65 000 and infections to more 1.6 million, second only to the United States;
- In Australia, five million residents of Melbourne have been told to stay at home for six weeks, amid a surge in cases. Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews announced the lockdown after the state saw 191 new infections, its highest daily number since the pandemic began. Australia has recorded almost 9 000 cases and 106 deaths;
- The BBC reported that a Spanish study covered in the medical journal, Lancet, cast doubt on the feasibility of herd immunity as a way of tackling the pandemic. The study of more than 60 000 people estimated that around just 5% of the Spanish population had developed antibodies. Herd immunity is achieved when enough people become infected with a virus to stop its spread. Around 70% to 90% of a population needs to be immune to protect the uninfected. The prevalence of Covid-19 antibodies was below 3% in coastal regions, but higher in areas of Spain with widespread outbreaks, the report said. ‘Despite the high impact of Covid-19 in Spain, prevalence estimates remain low and are clearly insufficient to provide herd immunity,’ the study’s authors said; and
- Oxford researchers from the university’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine believe the coronavirus may have been lying dormant across the world until emerging under favourable environmental conditions, rather than originating in China. Their study points to a string of recent discoveries of the virus’s presence around the world before it emerged in Asia as growing evidence of its true origin as a global organism that was waiting for favourable conditions to finally emerge. Traces of COVID-19 have been found in sewage samples from Spain, Italy and Brazil which pre-date its discovery in China.