Central SA
Expert reflects on SA's year-long battle against #Covid19─── 10:06 Fri, 05 Mar 2021
Infectious disease specialist and chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, has reflected on the year-long battle against Covid-19.
Friday marks exactly one year since the first known case of Covid-19 in South Africa.
Speaking in Durban on Thursday, Karim said many South Africans wanted the government to make use of traditional medicines to fight the virus.
He said the government had quite a task to convince South Africans that extracts of two medicinal plants, namely Artemisia annua and Artemisia afra (umhlonyane), cannot cure the virus.
"The matter we had to deal with was another drug against malaria, which is artemisia.
Karim said people would tell them that the president of Madagascar is putting artemisia in bottles and that the island nation does not have any Covid-19 cases.
"We had to explain that it doesn't work, but people want their medical drugs. It is particularly disturbing because medical people are aware of the rigorous ways in which we decide on what treatments are effective."
Karim reiterated that the various lockdowns imposed by the government helped restrict the spread of the deadly virus.
"One of the very critical things that were done was, very early on when we just had a few hundred cases and not a single death, we saw very early and decisive action was taken to impose a state of disaster.
"The state of disaster enabled us to control the borders, it enabled us to restrict gatherings. It closed the schools, it provided us with the tools to try and reduce the spread of the virus at an early stage."
Jacaranda News