A national network of health experts and the Progressive Health Forum (PHF) are among multiple voices criticising the draft regulations to the National Health Act as absurd.
Four sets of draft regulations were released for public comment on March 15, after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the end of the National State of Disaster.
The draft regulations relate to, among other things, Covid-19 being lumped together with notifiable communicable diseases, as well as forced quarantine and testing upon entry into South Africa via various points of entry.
Scientists, professional health workers, political parties and the faith sector have also raised concerns about the draft regulations.
A spokesperson for PHF, Dr Aslam Dasoo, said while he welcomed the Health Act as the principal piece of legislation to manage response to the pandemic, it included no progressive shift in terms of response, with the country wanting to utilise the “same nonsense” that was used in the national command and state of disaster regulations.
“To simply transplant the regulations as they were in the Disaster Management Act into the National Health Act is a problem.
“The regulations, as they are formulated, are inappropriate for managing the pandemic," said Dasoo.
He said the government had made a rod for its own back by putting forward the regulations.
“What should have rather happened was to have the National Health Act reviewed and where it required an amendment, to allow for the Minister, together with Cabinet, the parliamentary oversight bodies and ministerial advisory committee to issue regulations at any given moment that in their view would reduce transmission or help with the management of the pandemic, ” said Dasoo.
In response to the draft regulations, a group of pre-eminent scientists, including the University of Cape Town's Dr Marc Mendelson, also took the government to task.
They said the regulations appeared to be written in a general way that would apply to all notifiable medical conditions (NMCs) and not just Covid-19.
The scientists also said the draft regulations were “inconsistent, confusing, and illogical“ in the face of the advancing science of Covid-19 and vaccine roll-out.
They also questioned the listing of Covid-19 as a notifiable medical condition (NMC), saying this was unnecessary and that it should now be handled as influenza.
"Influenza is not an NMC, and like the swine flu pandemic influenza virus of 2009, the way forward for Covid-19 is to be considered in the same light, now that extensive population immunity has evolved against severe illness and the development of herd immunity or elimination of SARS-CoV-2 are no longer realistic goals," they said.
Opposition political parties, including the Democratic Alliance (DA), Freedom Front Plus (FF+) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), said the proposed regulations would, among other things, give powers to the health minister to enforce a lockdown and curfews.
Freedom of Religion South Africa (FORSA), an organisation that represents various faith communities, raised concerns that some public submissions were deleted without being read.
Executive director Michael Swain said FORSA wanted an assurance that all the emails would be restored and counted.
“It's a gross violation of the public participation process, and potentially flaws the entire government process.
“We will wait and see what transpires after the next set of regulations are published. It's then that we will have a view of what further action may be taken,”, Swain said
Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla told Parliament’s portfolio committee on health last week that the draft regulations were not new, but rather amendments.
“There is no desire from us to want to control people's lives unnecessarily. We just want to contain the pandemic and delay a rise in new infections and not burden our health workers and institutions," he said.
Regarding the deleted emails, Phaahla said he was convinced it was a technical matter that would be looked into.
“We take all the submissions seriously,” he said.
The deadline for submission of comments has been extended to this Friday.