South African Government has announced that the nation will be going into total lockdown from Thursday March 26.
Cyril Ramaphosa, South African President announced this after
Coronavirus cases in the country increased from 274 to 402 on Monday, March 23.
According to Ramaphosa, the stay-at-home order will be effective from March 26th till April 16th.
However, this order does not apply to essential services personnel, including police, health care workers and those involved in the supply of goods, including food.
“We need to urgently and dramatically escalate our response.
The next few days are crucial. Without decisive action the number of people
infected will rapidly increase.
This is extremely dangerous for a population like ours,
which has a a large number of people with suppressed immunity because of HIV
and TB, and high levels of poverty and malnutrition.”
South Africa which is currently in recession will be the
third country in Africa to close down all but essential economic activity,
after Rwanda and Tunisia.
From figures released by South Africa’s Health Ministry,
more than half of South Africa’s total cases are in Gauteng province, which
includes Johannesburg, the country’s largest city with 5.7 million people, and
the capital, Pretoria, with 2.4 million.
Though no coronavirus death has been recorded in the
country, majority of people infected are travelers from Europe and other
countries. The number of cases that are locally transmitted is also rising.
With the 128 new cases, South Africa as of Monday had the
most virus cases in Africa, surpassing Egypt.
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