KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Nomagugu-Simelane Zulu.
- KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu says the province’s Covid-19 infections have likely already peaked.
- She said officials believed this happened just after Gauteng.
- While numbers were declining, she urged the public to remain extra cautious.
KwaZulu-Natal, the province which had the first known Covid-19 patient in the country, is likely to have passed its peak infections, Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu said on Wednesday.
“In essence, as a province, we peaked and I believe we peaked just a few weeks after Gauteng. You would remember that towards the end of July, we had numbers that varied from 3 000 to 3 900. We had that average number for two weeks,” she told journalists during a site visit to Clairwood Hospital in Durban.
Simelane-Zulu said there had been a decrease in numbers since the beginning of August.
“Since early August, we’ve started seeing a bit of a dip and we are going down. At this point, we don’t want to outright say our numbers have gone down.”
ALSO READ | Makeshift parking lot ‘flu clinic’ at KwaZulu-Natal hospital there for more than a month
She was speaking after the Covid-19 hospital facility was handed over by the Department of Public Works to the Department of Health.
Simelane-Zulu said there were still a few days before numbers truly declined.
“The World Health Organisation has a protocol for the number of days that you can clearly say that your pandemic is on the decline. We don’t believe we’ve reached that yet. We will wait for a couple of days and see how our numbers are going to go down.”
This is no time to let your guard down
She urged the public to remain cautious despite the drop in numbers and the downgrade to Level 2.
“I must indicate I want to still call on our people that because we moved from Level 3 to Level 2 to exercise caution, but it does not mean the virus is not there anymore.”
READ | KZN hospital’s R6m building torched allegedly in protest over its use as Covid-19 treatment centre
Simelane-Zulu called on people to maintain mitigating measures, including wearing of a mask, sanitising and maintaining physical distancing.
“If we don’t do that, we will see our numbers rising.”
She said Clairwood Hospital became a Covid-19 facility at the beginning of the lockdown.
“We decided at the beginning of the pandemic that we would make this a Covid-19 hospital. We started moving the patients here to other facilities nearby.”
