Lockdown could move to level 3 by the end of May in most of SA
Most of the country may see a further relaxation of one of the most stringent lockdown regulations in the world by the end of May, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a late-night speech that otherwise offered few details.
SA has been in a Covid-19 nationwide lockdown for almost seven weeks, causing economists to forecast the worst economic contraction in at least a century. In his speech, the president sounded a conciliatory tone, acknowledging that mistakes had been made, that some regulations were poorly communicated and enforcement was too harsh.
“The transition to the next phase of the coronavirus response will in many ways be more difficult than the present one. The risk of infection outbreaks will increase as more people return to work. This calls for vigilance, responsibility and discipline from all of us,” Ramaphosa said. The level of confirmed infections in SA was about 181 people per million of the population, he said. This was in contrast to countries such as the US, the UK, Spain and Italy as well as Singapore, which have between 2,400 and 4,600 coronavirus cases per million people.
There has been widespread criticism and unhappiness about some of the stringent regulations put in place and the way the government has conducted itself and communicated.
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