The government says it’s not necessary to place any restrictions on religious gatherings in the wake of the coronavirus in the country.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize and member of the inter-ministerial committee on the coronavirus says they will engage religious groups on the matter.
He was briefing the media at The Ranch Hotel and Resort in Polokwane which has been identified as the quarantine zone for the group of 122 South Africans that will be repatriated from the Chinese city of Wuhan on Friday.
“We were meeting up with the ZCC. We are going to continue to meet other churches on Thursday. Next, we are meeting South African Council of Churches with all the churches that they can find. We are going to discuss the issue. Now, the challenge here is that if you want to prevent infection, the simplest thing is listen, cancel Good Friday, cancel, this cancel that. One, it’s not as easy as that. You also can’t make restrictions unilaterally. We don’t run the churches. We have to support the churches. We have to enlighten people and so on.”
Mkhize says everybody else including the ministers and the Limpopo leadership did not know about the identified area until at the last minute. He says the army chose the area at which the aircraft will land straight from China.
So far, there are 16 confirmed cases of coronavirus in South Africa.
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NB: Please note the number has been reviewed to 16 after Mkhize earlier retracted a comment that the country had seen the first case of local transmission of the coronavirus in the Free State saying the laboratory that had tested the patient had made an error.
Sub-Saharan Africa has reported far fewer cases of coronavirus than in Europe or China. But some analysts are worried that it could spread rapidly in poor or overcrowded areas if local transmission takes hold.
Below is a file video of throngs of people en route Moria during the Easter Conference:
Meanwhile, Rome’s Catholic churches were ordered closed on Thursday because of the coronavirus pandemic,in a moved believed to be unprecedented in modern times.
The decree by Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, Pope Francis’ vicar for the Rome archdiocese, will remain in effect until at least April 3. There are more than 900 parochial and historic churches in the Italian capital.
Previously, only Masses had been cancelled because of the outbreak. The decree also dispenses Catholics in the archdiocesefrom their obligation to attend Mass on Sunday’s and on what are known as Holy Days of Obligation.
The decree allows a relatively smaller number of oratories in convents and monasteries to remain open.
The move follows a decision by the Italian government on Wednesday night to close virtually every commercial activity inItaly apart from pharmacies, food shops and other stores selling essential goods.
St. Peter’s Basilica, which is on Vatican territory, has already been closed and the pope has cancelled his two weekly appearances in public. He held his most recent Sunday blessing and general audience from inside the Vatican and both have been streamed on the internet. – additional reporting by Reuters
