Durban - Police raided a multi-story building belonging to the Xinhua Distribution Centre on Pixley KaSeme Street on Wednesday over concerns that it was housing people that had symptoms of the coronavirus.
The Economic Development Tourism and Environmental Affairs in a statement said they received a serious complaint about people who alleged to have symptoms of the coronavirus were living inside the building.
"There are other serious allegations made by a complainant. I mean a serious complaint," Economic Development MEC, Nomusa Dube-Ncube said.
The building was locked down by law enforcement agencies early on Wednesday morning.
A pre-raid briefing was conducted involving all law enforcement agencies and health professionals from Department of Health.
Police raided a multi-story building belonging to the Xinhua Distribution Centre on Pixley KaSeme Street on Wednesday. Picture: Zainul Dawood.
"A decision was made that before a raid could be conducted, safety measures should be put in place and that people who live in the building be subjected to intensive screening," Dube-Ncube said
"Officials from the Department of Labour and Department of Health were on the scene accompanied by a large police contingent.
A bus filled with health workers disembarked at the scene to conduct testing of more than 100 people.
All wore protective clothing.
A police officer was seen with a bolt cutter entering and leaving the premises.
It was not known how many people were inside the building at the time of the raid.
The raid comes as 1 353 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections were recorded in South Africa on Tuesday with and five deaths.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on the latest death was from KwaZulu-Natal, where a 46-year-old woman from uMlazi, Durban, died. The woman had underlying chronic asthma and hypertension, the minister said.
The other death recorded on Tuesday was from Gauteng, where a 79-year-old man with no history of travel who had been to Cape Town died after having respiratory distress.
More than 39 000 people had been tested by late on Tuesday.