President Cyril Ramphosa says government is examining whether to end the coronavirus State of National Disaster.
Ramaphosa says now that the infection rate has come down and government, through the National Coronavirus Command Council, is looking into whether alternative methods can be used to manage the pandemic.
The country has been in various levels of lockdown since the pandemic broke out in 2020. He was speaking at the official launch of the NantSA vaccine manufacturing campus in Brackenfell, Cape Town.
“There is a good argument to be put forward that now that we are where we are should we not examinine and look at other methods other instruments that can be utilised. People have all the right to advocate for the dropping of the State of Disaster instrument. We are government, we’ve got to be very rational in everything that we do.”
He says the opening of the vaccine manufacturing campus is a milestone in Africa’s march towards health, progress, and prosperity.
“It is within the walls of this facility, through the networks that are being built, through the advanced skills that are being developed, and through the other initiatives across our continent, that our vision for the vaccine, diagnostics, and drug manufacturing in Africa will steadily take form.”
According to the president, the centre will go a long in helping the continent to fight coronavirus.
“As the African Union Champion on COVID-19, South Africa supports vaccine manufacturing in Africa to ensure self-sufficiency of the continent. Africa should no longer be last in line to access vaccines against pandemics. As some of you may recall, we were part of launching the WHO mRNA Hub led by Afrigen. Today we are marking the establishment of a company that aims to develop next-generation vaccines that will reach patients across the continent. This new entity, we understand, will collaborate with the mRNA hub by providing RNA enzymes they need to produce vaccines.”
He also emphasised the importance of vaccinations.
“Thanks to the outstanding work of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, we have secured over 500 million vaccine doses for the continent. This is a great achievement under extremely challenging circumstances. But these doses represent only around half of what the continent needs to vaccinate 900 million people in order to achieve the 70% target set by the WHO. We need more vaccine doses, we need better therapeutics, and we need to protect the people of our continent against future variants and future pandemics.”
South Africa currently has 3 564 578 confirmed coronavirus cases and 93 551 fatalities.
Below is the latest coronavirus statistics:
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