Nelson Mandela Bay: ‘Lockdown will only do harm at this point,’ says Prof Madhi

“Government has very little that it is able to do to stop this,” Professor of Vaccinology at Wits University, Shabir Madhi, said about the outbreak in one of two hotspots in South Africa. “The only place other than Nelson Mandela Bay that the hospital admissions data indicates as a hotspot is Mangaung in the Free State.” 

Hospitalisation data shows that the rest of the country was reasonably stable.

Madhi said any efforts to impose a lockdown on the district “will just damage more livelihoods. Any higher level of lockdown will be a futile exercise.

“It is almost a foregone conclusion that we are going to have a resurgence – the timing and magnitude will be measured by people’s behaviour. If people stop wearing face masks and ignore physical distancing the transmission of the virus will speed up. Handwashing remains very important. The virus has not disappeared from South Africa.” 

He said antibody tests done at HIV clinics and antenatal clinics in the Western Cape had confirmed that about one-third of the population was infected with the coronavirus the first time round.

“But this did not provide enough protection that the non-pharmaceutical interventions, like wearing masks and maintaining physical distance, could be dropped without a resurgence,” he said. 

The acting executive mayor for the metro, Thsonono Buyeye, said this week that while a harder lockdown was not ideal, the municipality may be compelled to enforce one to save people’s lives as there was no ward in the metro that did not have an active Covid-19 case.

A meeting with the provincial government’s joint command council was scheduled for Thursday, but Premier Oscar Mabuyane has tested positive for the virus. A former mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro and mayoral member committee in charge of water and electricity, Mongameli Bobani, died of Covid-19 related complications on Wednesday.

Buyeye said that because many of the infections are linked to large social gatherings at drinking venues, they had requested the provincial command council to amend the curfew for Nelson Mandela Bay to 10pm, but he was still waiting for feedback.

The Eastern Cape Health Department’s district manager for Nelson Mandela Bay, Darlene de Vos, said the number of cases on Thursday was at 6,173.

“Given current rates of infection this number could double by next week,” said Andrew Muir, president of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber. 

“In fact, Nelson Mandela Bay and surrounds is Africa’s hotspot and accounts for almost 90% of the Covid-19 cases in the Eastern Cape.”

He implored residents to remain at home and called on businesses in the metro to return to a work-from-home arrangement with their employees.

“If it is not essential, do not go out and those who have comorbidities or fall within the vulnerable category should take extra precautions,” Muir said.

“The metro’s health care system is overstretched and is overflowing, with hospitals in the public and private sectors running at full capacity. 

“As a business community we undertook renovations at our public hospitals, creating 160 additional beds and we also got the field hospital established. However, this is not sufficient to deal with the current surge in Covid-19 numbers,” Muir said. 

“The current situation is bad and could get much worse than what we experienced during the first wave of the virus in June and July this year.

“The main cause of this current serious situation is the gathering of people at parties and also participation in other socialisation activities. 

“As businesses, we cannot afford to be complacent about following these very necessary measures, as high absenteeism impacts upon the continuity of business operations.”

“What is clear to us is that people in Nelson Mandela Bay and the Sarah Baartman District [the district includes large parts of the Karoo, Humansdorp, Jeffreys Bay and St Francis Bay] do not wear their masks. 

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