Johannesburg - President Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed satisfaction with how SA has beefed up the fight against sporadic spread of the Covid-19 global pandemic throughout the country.
Ramaphosa was speaking during his visit to the Covid-19 Information Centre at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, which has been set up to gather data, monitor and track the spread of the coronavirus in the country.
Ramaphosa said he was impressed to see how the facility enabled the government to look at the entire country and see how it could get data and information about the incidents of infection.
He hailed Vodacom for its donation of 20 000 mobile phones for field workers who have been deployed to track, trace, screen and test people across provinces for the global pandemic, which had infected 1845 people and killed 18 people by Wednesday.
The mobile phones would also be used to transfer the data from the field workers on the ground to the Covid-19 Information Centre in real time.
“This is the assistance that we are appreciative of and also I would also like the leadership of the CSIR. They are stepping up in our effort to fight against coronavirus and they are doing it in the most scientific way and I think as a nation we should be proud that we have an institution like the CSIR which is always trying to be ahead of the curve in terms of bringing solution for the nation to utilise,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa said he was also pleased that the CSIR had already tracked all the available hospitals and beds, including hotels that could be utilised for isolation and quarantine.