South Africa’s Covid-19 focus must now move to the economy and saving jobs, Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has said in an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
All businesses that could open safely should be allowed to do so if South Africa was to avert a humanitarian crisis, a ‘second pandemic’ of joblessness and destitution.
And Gauteng has indicated that it is ready to start easing lockdown restrictions.
Both provinces said the fight against Covid-19 would continue.
Winde said the Western Cape’s biggest sector, tourism, expected more than 100 000 job losses. He said a sobering presentation to the provincial Cabinet predicted a drop in employment of 8.4% in 2020, with growth of only 1.9% in 2021. The informal sector was expected to shed a further 38 000 jobs in the province this year.
According to IOL, Winde pointed out that losses in income and employment had hit poorest people the hardest, with the poorest 10% experiencing a more than 55% reduction in employment.
Research had shown that people who had run out of money for food in the past year had likely increased from 25% to 47% nationally.
‘We need to put a face to this pandemic, and we need to understand that it is equally dangerous and deadly,’ Winde said.
He pointed out that, in the Western Cape, the number of people visiting primary healthcare facilities had dropped by 68%, with a 22% reduction in immunisations and a 36% reduction in screening for Tuberculosis.
Winde said: ‘The Western Cape Government will be doing all it can to ensure we address these challenges. But it will become harder to achieve if people continue to lose their jobs.’
The fight against Covid-19 ‘continues and will require every single person in our country to behave differently as we adapt to this new normal’, but ‘we have to now focus on the economy and saving jobs to much a greater degree’.
EWN reported that the Gauteng Covid-19 advisory council said the province was ready to start relaxing lockdown regulations.
It quoted the council’s Professor Bruce Mellado as saying: ‘The relaxation of the lockdown is a complex matter and from the mathematical standpoint, also based on experience from other countries, it’s very clear that whatever relaxation takes place, whatever consideration of that relaxation takes place, that it be performed gradually and in phases.”
Positive cases grew in South Africa yesterday by 3 946 to a cumulative total of 572 865 (with 437 617 recoveries). Deaths rose by 260 to 11 270.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (195 820), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (102 233), the Western Cape (100 976) and the Eastern Cape (83 002).
In other virus-related news
- Reuters reported that researchers from South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Argentina were in discussions to join United States counterparts in conducting large-scale human trials of an experimental vaccine from Johnson & Johnson beginning next month, according to government officials and scientists with knowledge of the effort. A benefit of participation would be easing their countries’ access to any successful products, Reuters said. It cited two sources ‘familiar with the matter’ as saying that Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive who heads Operation Warp Speed, a multi-billion dollar US collaboration between the federal government and drugmakers, made the commitment to international scientists late last month. It was not yet clear what specific commitments, if any, had been made to South Africa and the Latin American countries. The report said the advantage of working with Operation Warp Speed, which was backing at least half a dozen potential vaccines, was that it increased the chances that international partners would receive an effective product. South African scientists were expected to enroll between 10 000 and 12 000 people at about 30 sites for J&J’s Janssen division. TimesLIVE reported that South Africa’s health ministry did not comment. US health officials expected a successful vaccine to be identified by early 2021; and
- The global tally of infections rose to 20.6 million and deaths to just over 750 000, according to AFP.