{"id":498137,"date":"2021-06-14T08:31:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T06:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=498137"},"modified":"2021-06-14T08:31:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T06:31:22","slug":"health-department-pushes-for-tighter-lockdown-restrictions-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/498137\/health-department-pushes-for-tighter-lockdown-restrictions-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Health department pushes for tighter lockdown restrictions in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says the department will make recommendations to the National Coronavirus command Council (NCCC) this week on further lockdown restrictions for South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Kubayi-Ngubane told the SABC that the country has not yet reached herd immunity and that South Africans cannot behave recklessly.<\/p>\n<p>The minister said that the department had seen clear behavioural changes when the country moved up a lockdown level in the past, and that this is likely to be the case again when it makes its recommendations to the NCCC later this week.<\/p>\n<p>She said that the opposite is also true: when the country moves down lockdown level, and the mentality shifts to &#8216;Covid-19 is gone&#8217; and compliance drops.<\/p>\n<p>This issue has exacerbated by &#8216;fake news&#8217;, she said, with South Africans thinking they cannot be reinfected if they have already had Covid-19 or had a vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The issue that worries us the most is the complacency amongst South Africans when they see the lockdown level dropping,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LLNwb4JmHHE\" width=\"640\" height=\"430\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>South Africa reported\u00a07,657 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday (13 December), taking the total reported to 1,747,082.<\/p>\n<p>Deaths have reached 57,731, while recoveries have climbed to 1,606,581\u00a0 leaving the country with a balance of 82,736 active cases. The total number of vaccines administered is 1,773,417.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa&#8217;s vaccination efforts took a knock this week after the US Food &amp; Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that a large number of Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccines are contaminated.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, the FDA said that some batches of the J&amp;J version were not fit to use, while others are still under review. Two lots have been approved, though it\u2019s not clear where those are headed or how many that covers.<\/p>\n<p>The country&#8217;s health regulator has confirmed that these contaminated shots will not be used in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa is heavily reliant on the J&amp;J vaccine to meet a target of inoculating two-thirds of its 60 million population this year, having ordered more than 31 million of the single-dose shots.<\/p>\n<p>Aspen Pharmacare, Africa\u2019s largest drug maker, has a contract to fill and package the doses at a factory in the coastal town of Gqebherha.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/498071\/south-africa-faces-stricter-lockdown-as-vaccine-plans-take-major-knock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africa faces stricter lockdown as vaccine plans take major knock<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says her department will make recommendations to the National Coronavirus command Council (NCCC) this week on further lockdown restrictions for South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":390199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-498137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498137"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498171,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498137\/revisions\/498171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}