Health experts have added their voices to calls for government to scrap the National State of Disaster completely as it expires at midnight.
Professor of Vaccinology at Wits University, Shabir Madhi says the remaining restrictions and regulations no longer serve any purpose and should be lifted.
This comes as the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) meets to deliberate on measures that will continue to regulate the pandemic if the national state of disaster is not extended.
Prof Madhi says the country needs to move to a phase of learning to live with the virus: “Unfortunately, when it comes to wearing of masks, it hasn’t assisted us in keeping sown infection. Again to emphasize, these things might have been required at a point in time when we didn’t have extensive number of people, and now we sit at 80-85% that have developed protection against severe disease and death.”
Madhi added: “So, we should stop pretending that we are actually achieving much with interventions and regulations, which have failed dismally unfortunately in SA in protecting against infections, it might have had some value at some point in time but certainly not at this phase of the pandemic.”
