The meeting will focus on the province's state of readiness to deal with COVID-19, and to also talk about the identified quarantine areas in the province. The meeting will take place at Committee Room 2 at 11h30.

This comes after the statement rendered by the President of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa on measures to combat the COVID-19 epidemic, on Sunday 15 March 2020.

The portfolio committee would like the department to give a brief on their intervention plan on the crisis, to state identified quarantine areas in the province and seek ways to work together with the department to control or contain the outbreak of the virus, so that community members in the province can be put to calm.

“We are currently having a number of unresolved issues with our district and provincial hospitals emanating from prior years, such as the current usage of asbestos clinics, lack of sufficient medical equipment, unavailable chronic medications, lack of health medical doctors or practitioners and dilapidated infrastructures currently existing in our province.

“This is a national urgent call and we need to understand the measures that will be taken by the department to ensure safety and control of the corona outbreak, even amidst our current status of health in the province and how the committee can assist to ensure the safety of community members in the province,” said Hon. Williams.

Statement supplied.