The South African Medical Association has become the latest organisation to question the efficacy of President Cyril Ramaphosa's decision to only move the country back to lockdown level 3 to combat the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The organisation announced shortly after Ramaphosa's speech ahead of the youth day celebrations that they believed the move back to level 3 would do very little to stem the rising tide of daily Covid-19 infections.
Much more needed to be done in order to give the country's struggling healthcare system a chance to cope with the ever-increasing rate of daily infections picked up across all provinces, so said the association.
If anything, the association said, it believed that even stricter measures were required taking into consideration that the infection rates were higher than they had ever been with the previous waves of the pandemic, as well as the fact that many healthcare facilities and health professionals were not coping.
Dr Angelique Coetzee, Chairperson of SAMA, said they believed that the restrictions at level three still left too much space for social interaction, which most residents knew were still taking place without the proper precautions being in place.
Coetzee said at the same time it was important to note that many private and public facilities were filled to capacity, with resources already being stretched to the maximum.
"Without proper, effective and decisive measures to curb the spread of Covid-19, our infection and fatality numbers are going to climb even further. In addition, schools are still open, travel is still allowed and public transport can still operate as they currently are. This should not have been allowed."
"Nothing significant has changed. The stricter curfew measures and limitations on alcohol sales will simply mean people change their behaviour to accommodate for these restrictions and will have little impact on people’s daily routines. This is actually where restrictions should have been targeted."
Pretoria News