Does The Road To South Africa’s Future Amid Lockdown Point To Some Relief?

When will the lockdown in South Africa end? The aforementioned is a rather relevant question that concerns not just the young and the restless in the Madiba-land, but the working-class population as much as the industrious ones or those who are everyday common people like homemakers and students.

And therefore, this is the question all are awaiting an important answer to.

With the world in a state of lockdown, South Africa, too, is no different.

At present, much of the world’s focus is to either decrease the current number of COVID 19 cases or do something meaningful and urgently so, to completely avoid the spread of the very disease that’s got the entire planet, bunking down in a jail-like state.

In hindsight, trouble and chaos can ensue with the very telling statistics that emanate from the United States and Spain, where much like Iran and Italy before, the problem runs rather deep.

Amid this crisis, it’s important to establish a fact. South Africa, reeling with its own share of COVID-19 cases is preparing to take the fight in its own hands in a way that it can break free of the current lockdown.

Up to April 14, 2020, there have been as many as 2,415 overall cases of Coronavirus in South Africa, of which, there have been 27 fatalities while well over 410 instances wherein people have been fully recovered.

Now while it still may not read as a proper outbreak, one that can consume everything in its wake, the last thing one would want is for the government and the administrations to take it lightly for things to get worsened.

Therefore, the question is very relevant: when will the lockdown in South Africa end.

Now, here’s what the government has in store:

A set of criterion has already been laid out for the process of lifting the current nationwide lockdown, that has been the order of the day for the last two weeks.

Even as by Wednesday, the overall cases in the country were slightly above 2,400, there should be no doubts about a clear fact that so far, South Africa is the most affected country by the pandemic epidemic in all of Africa.

The above data is no fluke; it’s been gathered by the venerable Johns Hopkins University.

The following is what the current President had to state about the current burning question: when will the lockdown in South Africa end?

President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted in a national address last week that the rate of new infections had slowed to just 4% since stringent lockdown measures were implemented on March 27, down from 42% when the virus first arrived in the country. More than 83,000 tests have been conducted so far, although this remains well below the target of 10,000-15,000 tests per day.

That being said, an important question that must be addressed in all sincerity is whether the country has been urgent and critical in its detection of cases around the sphere of all nine provinces? Have nation-wide tests actually taken place on a serious level, that have considered myriad cultures?

While nothing could be further from the truth that the government isn’t sitting in a state of slumber or struck by some form of self-driven inactivity, what one cannot ignore is that insofar, only a little over 83,000 tests have taken place.

Now, in some ways, this is a peculiar number since according to the 2019 numbers, then the overall population of the country is nearing 6 crores.

Do the average and find out the math, and the final figure may not be a particularly impressive one, one supposes!

In fact, the President has himself said that there is a need toward making greater testing than what’s being done currently.

Furthermore, the chairman of the Country’s COVID-19 Advisory Committee had the following to say in the matter of lifting the currently imposed lockdown:

He said that whether the lockdown would be lifted would depend on the average rate of new infections between April 10 and April 16. Should infections rise by more than 90 per day, an extension will be implemented, but daily increases of between 45 and 89 may open the door to an easing of restrictions.