South Africans must be prepared to continue living with the reality of Covid-19 for at least 12 months, and grapple with a new normal in which fighting the coronavirus is a part of their daily existence, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.
In his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said the country's success in overcoming the coronavirus would ultimately be determined by behavioural changes.
The government ordered a lockdown from March 27 to curb Covid-19 transmissions, grounding all but essential services and closing all the country's borders. From May 1, lockdown regulations were eased to level 4 from level 5, allowing for some limited business activity to resume in Africa's most industrialised economy.
"Extreme precautions remain in place to limit community transmission. Our goal is to steadily reduce the alert level by keeping the rate of infection down and getting our health system ready for the inevitable increase in cases," Ramaphosa wrote on Monday.
"As the lockdown is gradually eased, life will slowly return. But it will not be life as we knew it before. We must be prepared for a new reality in which the fight against Covid-19 becomes part of our daily existence."
He noted that while much about the pandemic was still unknown, experts now agreed that the virus would remain a threat to global public health for some time.
"We must, therefore, be prepared to continue to live with the coronavirus among us for a year or even more," he said.
"Even after lockdown – especially after lockdown – we will still need to observe social distancing, wear face masks, wash hands regularly, and avoid contact with other people. We will need to re-organise workplaces, schools, universities, colleges and other public places to limit transmission."
He said South Africa should expect infections to rise as more people returned to work.
Currently, the country has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the continent at 10,015, out of which 194 people have lost their lives, while 4,173 have recovered from the virus which first emerged in China last December.
On Monday, Ramaphosa said the next phase of South Africa's national response was to step up intensive screening, testing and case management.
"Imposing a nation-wide lockdown gave our country a strategic advantage. It bought us valuable time to prepare our health system and put in place containment measures. This has slowed transmission and saved lives," he said.
The transition to the recovery phase of the response would be more difficult, he warned, with the risk of infection outbreaks increasing and demands on clinics, hospitals and medical personnel growing.
It was therefore important that easing lockdown restrictions should not result in careless behaviour by individuals or reckless practices by businesses keen to resume activity at the cost of human health.
"In the same way that we had to change our behaviour to prevent the spread of HIV, now we need to change our behaviour to stop the coronavirus," he said.
- African News Agency (ANA)
