SA to repatriate citizens from Wuhan
President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered the repatriation of South African citizens from Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the rapidly evolving coronavirus epidemic that has disrupted global trade and hammered financial markets.
The South Africans have been confined to Wuhan since mid-January after Chinese authorities imposed strict quarantine to try to contain the spread of the virus, known as Covid-19.
Of the estimated 199 South Africans in Wuhan, 132 had expressed a desire to be repatriated, the president said in a statement issued on Thursday night.
They would be quarantined for 21 days in SA, he said, but did not disclose the location or when they would arrive.
“The 21 days is all inclusive of arrivals and leaving quarantine area and admin to ensure there is a clear 14-day period of actual quarantine,” said Lwazi Manzi, spokesperson for health minister Zweli Mkhize
“[The] cabinet has decided on this course of action after due consideration of the circum
stances and following several requests from the families of South Africans in the city,” said Ramaphosa.
None of the affected people had been diagnosed with the virus or shown any symptoms of the disease, he said. More than 78,630 people have been infected worldwide by the Covid-19 virus, which has killed at least 2,747 people in China since it emerged late in 2019, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It said on Thursday that the virus had since then spread to 44 countries, with 3,474 cases and 54 fatalities reported.
Many countries have managed to contain the virus. But in the past fortnight, several countries, including Japan, Italy, South Korea and Iran, have experienced larger outbreaks. Iran has confirmed 139 cases and 19 deaths, the highest number of fatalities reported outside China.
On Thursday, WHO directorgeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to ensure they were adequately prepared as for the second day running the number of new confirmed cases reported outside China exceeded those reported inside China.
“No country should assume they won’t get coronavirus,” said Tedros, emphasising that rapid and aggressive containment measures could prevent imported cases or small clusters of disease turning into extensive and sustained community transmission.
The transmission of the coronavirus outside China has heightened concern about the spread of the disease to Africa, which has so far confirmed only two cases, one in Egypt a fortnight ago, and another in Algeria on Wednesday.
African countries have moved rapidly to improve their capacity to conduct coronavirus tests. Initially, only SA’s National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) and Senegal’s Institut Pasteur were the only laboratories in Africa with the capacity to do these tests, but now almost every country on the continent can do this, according to the head of the WHO’s emergency programme Michael Ryan.
The NICD said on Wednesday that it was the only laboratory at present testing for Covid-19 in SA. It had conducted 121 tests for suspected coronavirus and all were negative, it said.
“There are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in SA, nor any South African citizen with confirmed coronavirus,” health department spokesperson Popo Maja said on Thursday.