[important] President of South Africa: consider appropriate extension of the blockade period

On the afternoon of April 7, South Africa time, President Cyril Ramafosa (Cyril Ramaphosa) visited the COVID-19 Command Centre for Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation in Landwater, Johannesburg, and briefed him on the activities of the Centre in response to the epidemic. The National Coronavirus Command Council is assessing the effectiveness of the 21-day blockade and will decide whether to extend the blockade. It is also frank that the Government of South Africa has indeed considered appropriately extending the duration of the blockade, which will depend on its current effectiveness.

(Paternoster Group), a South African political think-tank, also released a note this week exploring the possibility of relaxing the rules. The outlook is not very optimistic at the moment, and the group believes that a long shutdown is a foregone conclusion.

After the initial blockade was announced in March, the government may want to extend it, and three weeks will not be enough to flatten the anti-epidemic curve. Although locking can be said to be the most effective measure of thorough intervention in the trajectory of the virus, it is not in itself a panacea. Blockade of States is a means to an end, not an end itself. To be successful, it needs to be combined with the "quadruple" strategy "tracking, testing, tracking and treatment" developed by the government over the past two weeks. In essence, the government needs to use lock-up periods to master the virus and understand its severity and where it spreads fastest. Although the 4T strategy is now clearly seen, the government is still unable to implement the plan in a broad enough manner to achieve the main objectives of the lock-in.

So far, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa has increased to 1686, an increase of 31 from Sunday's official count. The new crown virus claimed another life, bringing the total number of Covid-19 deaths in South Africa to 12.