Ramaphosa made the comments in a weekly newletter on the fourth day of a 21-day lockdown he has called to try and curb the spread of the disease which has infected 1,280 people in South Africa, with two losing their lives.

"It is important that this lockdown and all other emergency measures are both strictly adhered to and consistently enforced," Ramaphosa said, noting that this had been effective in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected last December.

"Wuhan, a city of 11 million people... had more than 50,000 infections. Now, after more than two months of stringent lockdown measures were put in place, the province has had fewer than 20 new cases in the past two weeks," the president said.

Other countries that had taken similar measures were having greater success in managing the spread of the disease than those that had been slower to respond, he added.

"As the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide grows to over 700,000 and the number of deaths exceeds 33,000, we can draw lessons from these countries," Ramaphosa said.

African News Agency