President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced a national lockdown in South Africa, which will come into effect on Thursday from midnight, and will last until midnight on 16 April, as the government declares measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Dr Angelique Coetzee, chairperson of Sama, agrees that mitigation approaches are crucial to combating the spread of the virus and that effective steps such as those the president announced, will have a positive effect locally in reducing the number of infections.

However, Coetzee notes that drastic mitigation strategies that have been implemented by other countries that developed heavy caseloads have relied heavily on a strong response from the public, driven by clear guidance from the government. As Sama they urge South Africa to do the same.

Among several steps the president has announced are a restriction on foreign nationals travelling to South Africa – especially from high-risk countries – a ban on more than 100 people gathering and an increase in allocation of health care services to cope with the pandemic.

Sama says two additional measures are necessary. 

Firstly, the association says it is important to make public the areas and not just the provinces of the identified cases. A second additional strategy is to give priority consideration to telemedicine.

“Telemedicine has emerged as a crucial element of the response to coronavirus in many countries and enables patients to contact health providers from their homes, and get appropriate medical advice based on the development symptoms, without endangering healthcare workers and other patients,” she says.

Moreover, Coetzee says that existing guidelines from South Africa's health professions council (HPCSA) do not make room for such consultations and instead allow for face-to-face contact between patients and practitioners.

Coetzee says the association calls on both the department of health and HPCSA to advocate for telemedicine as one of the preventive approaches that the government can use to curb the Covid-19 spread. 

“We believe such a move, which will be subject to all ethical rules and recommended record-keeping, is a strategically sound one, and may, ultimately, present more solutions than barriers in this fight,” Coetzee said. 

African News Agency