The development adds to growing concern about the potentially devastating effects the virus will have if it spreads rapidly in poor communities
While the number of cases of Covid-19 in SA is relatively small compared with many hard-hit countries, the rapid rise in the numbers since the first case was announced on March 5 prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare a national emergency on Sunday. He ordered the closure of schools and imposed the most stringent restrictions on travel and mass gathering yet seen on the African continent.
By Tuesday it had sickened 185,067 people in 155 countries and regions, with Italy the hardest hit after China, with close to 28,000 cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Tracker. While most cases of the respiratory disease are mild, it causes severe illness in up to 15% of patients and has already led to more than 7,300 deaths worldwide.
Six of the 23 new cases confirmed since then are people who have no travel history outside of SA, the minister said in a statement. These six cases are in Gauteng ; KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape . There had been a debate with clinicians, epidemiologists and virologists about the timing of the public release of the results, with the experts saying there was an ethical obligation to alert patients as soon as their initial results became available, he said. Until now, tests conducted by private laboratories had to be verified by state laboratories before being announced by the minister.
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