Although public health experts welcome the lockdown as “the right thing to do”, some warn that a lockdown alone is not a silver bullet.
Professor Landon Myer, the head of public health and family medicine at the University of Cape Town, told Spotlight the situation was “unprecedented in its gravity, complexity and uncertainty”.
“Amid this global pandemic, the president has managed to inspire patriotism and social solidarity,” said Dr Harsha Somaroo, public health specialist at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“Mitigation would be where we try to slow the viral spread but accept that a significant percentage of the population will get infected and slowly a herd immunity would be built,” she said. “But the problem with this model is the tremendous risk of thousands of deaths and an overwhelmed health system. This we saw in Italy and now increasingly in the UK.”
She attributed this to people, especially from poorer communities, who might associate Covid-19 as a condition of white and rich people because the initial cases were linked to international travel. “This would spread out the burden on our health services over time which otherwise might not be able to cope with the sudden increase in people going to hospitals.”
Mehtar agreed. She said to contain the virus we had to block as many avenues of transmission – recognised and unrecognised. “This will decrease the number of people who could potentially infect others. I hope that this type of mass testing is being planned with an concomitant intensive tracing and isolating campaign to make maximum use of the lockdown.”“Much more testing is essential so we can know who has it and where they all are. Then measures to prevent its spread can be tailored for different circumstances.”
Cairncross told Spotlight that the strength of the government’s social and economic support programmes would “make or break” the lockdown. “And it’s not certain how it will all work out – in some sense it is a giant, high-stakes social experiment,” he said.Tucker said the series of measures – not just the lockdown – would definitely have an effect.
But he emphasised that “the best outcome will be achieved if every South African citizen takes this seriously and does not try to undermine the raft of interventions, including the lockdown.”
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