Durban - Patient zero - the first person to have been detected for the coronavirus in South Africa - was still in isolation in hospital, KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu said on Monday
Simelane-Zulu said that patient zero who arrived from Italy nearly two weeks ago was doing well. The Hilton man is currently in isolation at Grey's Hospital.
She said that tests were continuing to be carried out on the man to ensure he no longer carried the virus.
The people he was travelling with from Italy, were also doing well, she said.
Simelane-Zulu was speaking on Monday at press briefing that touched on various aspects of the virus, where explained how it is treated and how the provincial government was responding to its spread.
Speaking about the eThekwini Municipality's decision to stop using breathalysers to prevent the spread of the virus, Simelane-Zulu said the decision was a practical one and was not done out of panic.
The briefing came in the wake of President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing the travel bans of people from countries like China, Italy and South Korea that have been hit hard by the virus.
Simelane-Zulu also addressed the issue if people buying masks to supposedly protect themselves.
"Not everybody needs to wear a mask because of Covid -19 virus," she said.
Simelane-Zulu said masks helped when a person had been infected.
She said that people should wash their hands thoroughly as a way of preventing in infection.
"I'm sure to mention that once a person had been infected it was difficult to say when they would recover as it could take anything from a few days to more than two weeks. It was completely dependent on each person," she said.
Simelane-Zulu said the department had trained everyone at the hospitals down from the cleaners up to the doctors on how to handle Covid-19.