SA not out of the woods yet – Mkhize

Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says South Africa is over the Covid-19 surge, but cautions that the country is “not out of the woods” yet.

In an interview yesterday on Radio Islam, Mkhize said since the first recorded case of Covid-19 in South Africa, the country has done its best, with the number of positive cases now over 640 000, and just over 15 000 deaths reported.

“But we can safely say that we are over the surge,” he said, adding that the months of June, July and August had been the worst, just as models had predicted.

“However, we have found that it was not as many people as the model had suggested,” Mkhize said, thanking all South Africans “for taking heed of our precautionary measures” which positively contributed to “containing the infection”.

Moving from Level 5 to Level 4 and to Level 3 of the lockdowns saw an increase in the number of infections, Mkhize said. He said a number of factors were behind the current decrease in the number of infections, including “one of the major factors” which is “the containment measures” the government has embarked on.

In the past week, South Africa has dropped from number five globally in terms of the number of infections to number eight, Mkhize said, adding that it appeared it would drop further.

“But we are not out of the woods, we must always be careful because it may still rise again like it’s happening in Spain, in America, in Iran and so on,” Mkhize said.