He said that in the first week after the virus had reached South Africa, 35 tests were done per day; now the average was 15,000 per day.
South Africa is doing everything it can to keep up with the required level of testing for Covid-19, but there are “constraints beyond our control”, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said.
Mkhize also noted this in his daily Covid-19 press release on Tuesday: “As a country, we are now facing a challenge with the global shortage of testing reagents. We understand it’s becoming a challenge to many other countries.” DA MP Siviwe Gwarube told Mkhize she was glad he was “exploring alternative means to ramp up our tests” and spoke of its importance in identifying cluster outbreaks.
Mkhize confirmed there would be restrictions, without going into the specifics, and thanked religious leaders for their role in the compliance with the lockdown regulations.Thring’s question was a follow-up to a question from Gwarube about the modelling and data, as to when it envisaged the peak of Covid-19 infections would be reached and what the death rate would be.
He said it was estimated the number of deaths could range between 34,000 and 50,000. However, he pointed out that all these figures had been challenged by other academics, and that it was a field of rich debate.
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