On Sunday, President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa announced that his nation will get back to stringent lockdown measures due to the rapid rise in the coronavirus cases, which indicate that the virus is spreading massively again.
The positive cases in the nation in the last 7 days were around 31 percent more than what was recorded a week prior and 66 percent more than what was recorded a week before this. Ramaphosa said that some areas of the nation, including Pretoria and Johannesburg, were in the third coronavirus wave now.
As a response to the surging cases, Ramaphosa said starting Monday, the night curfew will be extended by one hour, i.e. it will begin at 11pm and end at 4am. Maximum 100 people will be permitted in indoor social gathering and not over 250 in outdoor gatherings. Only 100 people will be allowed to attend funerals and post-funeral gathering are banned completely, said the President. Non-essential business enterprises should close down by 10pm.
The decision to adopt stricter lockdown measures in South Africa comes after observing the tragic consequences the other nations are witnessing for leaving the coronavirus to spread unnoticed, said Ramaphosa.
Notably, South Africa has over 1.6mn confirmed coronavirus cases and over 56,000 deaths, over 30 percent of these cases and around 40 percent of deaths reported by all 54 countries of Africa, as per the Africa CDC.