This is according to Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille.

As part of government’s response to address the pandemic, various departments have various roles and mandates to fulfil to safely navigate the country through the pandemic, De Lille said in a statement issued ahead of the country's move to Covid-19 alert level 3 as of Monday, June 1, when millions of people would return to work.

In terms of the regulations, her department’s role was to identify and make quarantine sites available, after which the health department assessed and confirmed the facility as a quarantine site if it met the criteria, she said.

"Once a facility is confirmed as a quarantine site, the department of health will operationalise the site and it will be activated and procured by DPWI [department of public works and infrastructure] when the site is needed. Our task was to identify quarantine sites in all 44 districts and eight metros."

As part of the process, the DPWI had engaged all provincial public works departments and local governments to ensure that possible quarantine sites were identified in all 44 districts and eight metros in cases where there DPWI-owned properties were not available, De Lille said.

The DPWI had been working on all fronts over the past two months to ensure that it was ready for all eventualities and the worst case scenario by having enough quarantine facilities available as the need arose and should the number of people needing to be quarantined increase dramatically.

The department was also approached by the private sector, specifically the hospitality sector, who were willing to avail their sites to be used for quarantine purposes, as these properties were empty due to lockdown regulations and therefore had no guests.

"There are now 1751 facilities that have been identified as proposed sites, representing more than 129,600 beds across the country, in all 44 districts and eight metros. Of these 1751 facilities, 642 are state-owned facilities and 1109 are privately-owned," De Lille said.

In the Western Cape, for example, which currently had the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths, 358 facilities had been identified, translating into more than 27,500 beds. Some of these sites had already been assessed and confirmed as compliant. They had been activated and the health department was in the process of assessing the remaining sites.

To date, 395 facilities nationally had been assessed by the health department and found to be compliant with the requirements for quarantine, making 35,759 beds available.

In addition to state-owned and private facilities, there were also sites belonging to state-owned entities (SOEs), such as Transnet and Eskom, and these had been activated and managed by the SOEs. The public sector sites had been set up and activated by government and in the various provinces, and were managed by the respective provincial governments, she said. 

"With these numbers, we can assure South Africans of the DPWI’s state of readiness to have enough quarantine facilities available as the need arises with an expected increase in infections and repatriations. The DPWI’s state of readiness will be improved as more sites are assessed and confirmed by the department of health," De Lille said.

To date, the DPWI had assisted with procuring quarantine sites for more than 10,000 South Africans who had been repatriated from all over the world and were required to be in quarantine for the mandatory 14-day period before they could return to their homes in South Africa.

Work was also under way by the provincial public works departments in relation to field hospitals. In the Eastern Cape, 32 hospitals had been identified for refurbishment. In KwaZulu-Natal, 19 hospitals were being refurbished, and in Mpumalanga 10 sites had been identified for field hospitals and the province was currently doing technical assessments, she said.

In the Western Cape, the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) had been completed as a field hospital site, while other sites had been identified and were being considered for conversion to field hospitals.

In the North West, teams were focusing on augmenting the capacity of existing hospitals by constructing additional structures. The remaining provinces were still in the process of finalising their plans for field hospitals.

"We are committed to continuing our task and doing all we can to keep citizens safe during this time and do all we can to curb the spread of the virus," De Lille said.

African News Agency