Infection Surge Sets South Africa on Coronavirus Storm Path

(Bloomberg) -- With the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in South Africa breaching the 200 mark and set to climb, the authorities said they are desperately trying to slow the disease’s spread to avoid swamping the health-care system.

The proportion of the population that could be infected “can go to about 60%,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told reporters in the central city of Bloemfontein on Friday. “It doesn’t mean those people are going to die, it doesn’t mean all of them are going to get it at the same time, it doesn’t mean we’ve now got an apocalypse.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the virus a national disaster on March 15, closing schools and some borders and imposing travel bans on foreigners who recently visited 10 nations hardest-hit by the disease, including the U.S., U.K., China and Italy. South Africa has confirmed 202 cases of Covid-19 since the first one was detected on March 5. Two patients have recovered and there haven’t been any fatalities.

The government isn’t considering imposing a state of emergency at this juncture because existing regulations give it sufficient powers to lock down areas or restrict movement, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told reporters in Pretoria, the capital. Police Minister Bheki Cele said the military will only be deployed to help combat the disease if a state of emergency is declared.

On Thursday, Mkhize said the government wants to ramp up the number of people being tested to 30,000 a day by mid-April, compared with 5,000 now.

South Africa’s case count is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The country should prepare for a “difficult” three or four months, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association, said at the briefing.

“We are still not in, as people like to call it, the eye of the storm, but we are moving into it,” she said.

Infections have been confirmed in six of the country’s nine provinces. Gauteng, the economic hub, which has 109 cases, and the Western Cape, which has 56 have been hardest hit.

The authorities are concerned about a widespread outbreak in the central Free State province, where five travelers -- two from Texas, one from Israel and one from France -- attended a church service and subsequently developed coronavirus symptoms. The Red Cross is helping track down the church’s 600 congregants, who are considered high risk, and a mobile unit will be dispatched to test them, Mkhize said.

Like South Africa, more than 20 other African countries this week imposed travel bans or shut their borders altogether, and many have closed schools and banned large gatherings, including religious festivals.

“It’s wise to put these measures in place,” Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said in a phone briefing Thursday. “The earlier, the better.”

Other key developments:

• South African Airways, the national carrier that has been placed under a form of bankruptcy protection, canceled all flights outside of Africa until the end of May.
• South Africa’s National Treasury said it will soon release details of a plan to shore up the economy.
• The FTSE/JSE Africa All-Share Index surged as much as 8.5% on Friday, a day after the central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point. The rand gained as much as 1.8% against the dollar.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.