Johannesburg - South Africa needs to
conduct "hundreds of thousands" of coronavirus tests to
understand the true number of infections and halt their spread,
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Wednesday.
The country has the highest number of coronavirus cases in
sub-Saharan Africa, and the government is worried that infection
rates could get out of hand if the virus starts spreading
rapidly in the country's poor and overcrowded townships.
Officials have imposed some of the toughest anti-coronavirus
measures on the continent, including a 21-day "stay at home"
lockdown that started on Friday.
Mkhize said officials were moving away from a testing model
focused on people with symptoms to one that also targeted
communities where people with mild symptoms could be slow to
seek medical help.
Mkhize told a news conference that testing criteria had been
"reactive and restrictive".
"We need to test hundreds of thousands of the population to
get a better picture and refine our containment strategy," he
added.
South Africa has conducted around 47 000 tests, with 1 380
confirmed cases of the virus and five deaths.
It can currently conduct around 5 000 tests a day and hopes
to expand that to 36 000 a day by the end of April, according to
the national laboratory service.
Mkhize said the government was sending 67 mobile testing
vans across the country.
"Even though we talk about 47 000 tests, they are still far
too little, because of the nature of our country, the nature of
the disease burden, the inequalities."
Health workers started testing people in the Alexandra
township near Johannesburg's financial district on Tuesday, and
there are plans to move to other townships in the coming days.
Mkhize said South Africa could seek reinforcements from
China and Cuba to help with containment efforts and that it was
important to make quick progress.
"Next month the flu season will start, thus making more
people sick with similar symptoms ... these will flood our
hospitals and clinics and create a fertile ground for
coronavirus to spread," he said. "We might be currently
experiencing a calm before we have a devastating storm."
Reuters
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