Health Minister Zweli Mkhize this week said South Africa needed to conduct hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 coronavirus tests to understand the true number of infections in the country
South Africa has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in sub-Saharan Africa, and government is worried that infection rates could get out of hand if the virus spreads rapidly in the country’s poor and overcrowded townships.
On Wednesday, Mkhize said officials were moving away from a testing model focused on people with symptoms to one that also targeted communities where people with mild symptoms may not be able to seek medical help quickly enough. South Africa has conducted about 47 000 tests. So far, there have been 1 380 confirmed cases of the virus and five deaths.
Even though we talk about 47 000 tests, that is still far too few because of the nature of our country“Even though we talk about 47 000 tests, that is still far too few because of the nature of our country, the nature of the disease burden and the inequalities.”
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