Cape Town - The Western Cape could lodge an intergovernmental dispute with the national government if the country’s lockdown regulations are not relaxed after Saturday’s President’s Co-ordinating Council (PCC) meeting Premier Alan Winde said.
The PCC comprises ministers, premiers, executive mayors of metropolitan municipalities and the leadership of the SA Local Government Association. Winde hopes to use the occasion to lobby the president.
Speaking during his weekly digital news conference, Winde said: “It’s now time to fight the unemployment pandemic with equal determination and courage as we did the coronavirus.
“In the Western Cape we used the lockdown period effectively, working around the clock to make sure that we had field hospitals up and running, adequate resources such as PPE and oxygen supplies, while implementing targeted hot-spot interventions to contain the virus in our communities.”
“However, we need to also be honest that the hard interventions taken to slow the spread of Covid-19 have allowed for a second, equally serious and potentially deadly pandemic to take root in our country.
“This is the pandemic of unemployment, hunger and increasing levels of poverty.
“Like the decision to take South Africa into hard lockdown, this will be a hard one. But I will argue to the president that the same courage he demonstrated then, will be needed now. I know that there are some who will be opposed to it, and there are many people who are very scared.
“Leadership requires us to make these tough calls, following the best advice possible, in the interests of our people.”
Giving more detail on the provincial diabetes risk response, head of health Dr Keith Cloete said: “Of the total high-risk diabetic patients that we have contacted over the last two weeks, 39 have been admitted and only two died.”
“The background mortality in this risk group is several fold higher, at about 37%. After two weeks of the programme, there are 18 patients still admitted in the CTICC Hospital of Hope and they are currently being strictly managed.”
Read more: Winde calls on Ramaphosa to fight second pandemic with ’determination and courage’
Cape Argus