The Eastern Cape provincial government will embark on mass testing,
screening, tracking and tracing of people who are contacts of people infected
by the Coronavirus.
According to a statement, issued by the Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane’s office, government will also enforce mandatory wearing of cloth masks in public places,
public transport and other regulations will be put in place to prevent the spread of
COVID-19 infections in the province.
“There are currently 108 313 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the province,
94 799 of those people have since recovered and sadly, 4 054 people have
died from COVID-19 related illnesses,” the statement read.
The daily epidemiological report from the Eastern Cape provincial
Department of Health issued last night (15 November at 23:00)
shows that in the last 24 hours 78,4% of the newly reported cases were
from the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and Sarah Baartman district
municipalities.
The epidemiological report goes further to say the number of active cases
in the last 24 hours was 9 460 and that 89,7% of all the active cases were
from the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and Sarah Baartman municipalities.
According to the epidemiological report, the 7 day-moving average shows
a 34,5% increase in the positivity rate from 20,0% to 26,9% in the last 13
days.
“The meeting of the Extended Provincial Coronavirus Command council
that took place on Sunday afternoon, took a decision to embark on mass
testing, isolation and contact quarantine as a way of slowing the spread of
COVID-19 infections.
The province will receive additional testing resources from the national
government, personnel for tracking and tracing to help us with mass testing
and screening. Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize will announce more details
on this during his visit to the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and Sarah
Baartman this week.”
Some of the Cuban doctors have been re-assigned to
the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro to assist with the resurgence of COVID-19
infections.
This will see testing of all people between the ages of 16 to 60 in the
Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, Sarah Baartman district municipality using
antigen detection (Ag RDT) and PCR confirmation to find more positive
cases and those that were contacts of people who tested positive for
coronavirus in order to slow community transmission.
“One of our responsibilities through this approach is to ensure provision of
medical care and protection of the elderly by ensuring that logistics team
supports hospitals, triage older patients when admitted to hospitals, ensure
availability of beds in hospitals, ensure availability of oxygen supply and
Personal Protective Equipment in all hospitals.
The province has also resolved to enforce wearing of masks in the Nelson
Mandela Bay Metro and in the Sarah Baartman district by making masks
wearing mandatory in public with police pro-actively insisting on wearing of
masks.
“We are increasing distribution of public information to educate the public
about continuation of adhering to prevention measures to prevent
transmission of this virus for public action. The public action we want to see
is change in the behavior of our people. We want the people of our
province to obey all the prevention measures put in place to prevent the
spread of transmission,” it said in the statement.
The provincial government will now release the epidemiological report of
the provincial Department of Health to the public on a daily basis. This
report will only focus on the rate of infections, number of people admitted in
hospitals, numbers of people who have died as a result of COVID-19
related illnesses, number of active and new COVID-19 cases.
The implementation of this programme will increase engagement with
public stakeholders like the taxi industry, alcohol trading and entertainment
places, the basic and higher education sector, shopping malls, businesses
in these hotspot areas to enforce wearing of masks, sanitizing, keeping
and maintaining physical distance as part slowing the spread of infections.
