Business leaders and medical experts are urging the government to take stronger measures to boost the vaccination rate rather than impose stricter lockdown rules to curb the new Omicron variant
Minister Naledi Pandor said: “This pandemic requires collaboration and sharing of expertise. Our immediate concern is the damage that these restrictions are causing to families, the travel and tourism industries and business.”
Adrian Gardiner, chair of luxury hotel operator The Mantis Group, called the flood of cancellations “an absolute nightmare”, and “How will the president explain a hard lockdown after the elections, because when they were campaigning it’s like Covid-19 gave them space to campaign and now it has miraculously returned.”
Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele admitted in a post-cabinet briefing on Thursday that some campaign events ignored safety protocols, including social distancing. Low vaccination rates, large numbers of unjabbed people and vulnerable populations provide the conditions that favour viral mutations and the development of new and more vicious variants, Moodley said.
"We will view any decision ... to ban or restrict the sale of alcohol as premeditated economic sabotage aimed at destroying our people and subjecting them to poverty.” “They would have to prove that unvaccinated people put strain on the health system, because of the likelihood of severe disease and hospitalisation, and show why that negatively affects the rights of people who may need to use the health system but are prevented because of a shortage of beds [and] lack of resources,” he said.
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