A year on since first case of Covid-19 in SA
Hard lockdown helped to contain infections
“A 38-year-old male who travelled to Italy with his wife... they were part of a group of 10 people and they arrived back in South Africa on March 1, 2020.”
This is how health minister Zweli Mkhize announced the first confirmed case of Covid19 in SA on March 5 last year.
Several parts of Italy and Spain had been going through the first wave peak of the global pandemic when this happened. Mkhize’s announcement went to reveal that “the patient consulted a private general practitioner on March 3, with symptoms of fever, headache, malaise, a sore throat and a cough.”
“The practice nurse took swabs and delivered it to the lab,” Mkhize explained at the time. The health department indicated that the patient had been self-isolating since March 3 and that the couple has two children. It was soon revealed that the man is from Hilton in KZN and that on its own sparked fear in the province which would become among the epicentres of the coronavirus in SA.
Barely a week after the announcement, principal of the Westville Boys High School, Graham Steele, informed parents that they had been told that one of their pupils shared the same flight as the Hilton man who is SA’s first confirmed coronavirus case.
Around the same time, the Orient Islamic School in Greyville alerted parents that one of their pupils travelled to a country affected by the virus.
What followed shortly thereafter was the announcement of the state of disaster and the introduction of a hard lockdown by President Cyril Ramaphosa which saw gatherings being restricted, schools closing for a prolonged period and only essential services being allowed to work.
Prof Salim Abdool Karim, the chair of ministerial advisory committee on coronavirus, who was reflecting on one year since Covid-19 hit SA, said: “When we had our first case on the first of March, that initial period the epidemic in South Africa was growing rapidly, so rapidly we were doubling every two days.
“We were competing almost case-for-case with the UK, we were almost following each other, our numbers were almost the same,” he said.
Karim said what set SA apart from the UK and other countries was the “decisive” move to put the country under a lockdown and the declaration of the state of disaster which enabled the country to control the borders and curb infections.
Karim said the first patient gave SA hope because he recovered. He, however, said he was very disturbed and concerned by the amount of stigma that many of the initial first patients received, as it reminded him of HIV/Aids.