Looking at the impact of lockdowns in other countries. The red line depicts the exponential increase in the way it is happened

There is a lot of good lessons in the way China has dealt with it. The leadership of @WHO needs to be commended. We want to say that we support the DG of WHO for the leadership they have given.

If you look at the numbers, we all start with the same numbers (an increase of 42%) With the lockdown we have stopped the importation if the virus. We have aborted the immediate peak and are no longer following the rest of the countries (as you can see in the turn of our line)

We have now parted ways with the countries with rapid spread. For South Africans let’s be ambitious and say together we want to part ways with the trends of the west and Europe. I’m not saying we are there, but let’s try as South Africans to unite and follow the leadership.

One person can change the trend of infection. Internal transimission is slowed due to the lockdown, however when we open those pockets that’s when the problem will come, so we will anticipate a few more peaks.

We are checking hospital admissions. There has been no explosion. The numbers of deaths do not show a huge explosion.

Contact tracing is important. We need to go around them to test. We need to scale up the screening of patients in various communities. 456074 people have been screened thus far in provinces.

A large number of tracers are involved.There are 13488 tracers

We want to call on everyone to cooperate with the screening processes.

Contact tracing, screening and test referring will be our strongest way going forward

We must have a new culture of social distancing and no hugs, kissing or shaking of hands

Use of masks
We recommend widespread use of cloth masks. Individuals can make their own masks. There shouldn’t be a need for everyone to be wearing surgical/N95 masks. Let’s reserve those for the frontline workers treating patients.

With a mask We can protect the next person, Dont keep touching the mask, Don’t keep removing the mask and Treat the mask as potenially infective. Ensure regular washing of the mask, we will make the guidelines available.

We have had successful initaives with the business fraternity. I am able now on a dashboard to see the level of stock. We can check the country’s readiness on PPEs, and we can order stock from other countries.

We met with a large number of unions. We were able to agree on the issue that protection of staff is the most important, no memeber of staff will be forced to go to work without the respective gear that they would need in their designated position

Not everyone will need the full gear of PPEs. There are guidelines in place, and these will be followed.

The meetings were constructive and we appreciate the cooperation of all those involved.

The unity that has been shown during this time has begun to show green shoots. It is possible that we may be able to buck the trend and chart our own path.