{"id":498371,"date":"2021-06-14T15:58:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T13:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=498371"},"modified":"2021-06-15T11:44:40","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T09:44:40","slug":"gauteng-government-joins-push-for-more-lockdown-restrictions-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/498371\/gauteng-government-joins-push-for-more-lockdown-restrictions-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Gauteng government joins push for more lockdown restrictions in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng government says that it will support the introduction of stronger lockdown restrictions this week as the province struggles with an influx of Covid-19 cases.<\/p>\n<p>Officials told <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2021\/06\/14\/gauteng-to-consider-more-restrictions-to-mitigate-rising-covid-19-infections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EWN<\/a><\/strong> that additional restrictions are necessary to help slow down the number of daily Covid-19 infections being seen in the province.<\/p>\n<p>Gauteng premier David Makhura is now expected to raise the issue with the national government this week, with the country&#8217;s National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) expected to meet on Thursday (17 June).<\/p>\n<p>The provincial government&#8217;s Thabo Masebe said that additional restrictions were especially necessary given the rising case of hospitalisations in Gauteng.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We talk to the private hospitals almost on a daily basis, and they do indicate to us that they are running almost at about 80% of their capacity for ICU. In the public hospitals, we are also running at about 70%,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>This echoes calls by acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane who said that her department will also make <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/498137\/health-department-pushes-for-tighter-lockdown-restrictions-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recommendations<\/a><\/strong> to the NCCC this week on further lockdown restrictions for South Africa.<\/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 \u2018Covid-19 is gone\u2019 and compliance drops.<\/p>\n<p>This issue has exacerbated by \u2018fake news\u2019, she said, with South Africans thinking they cannot be reinfected if they have already had Covid-19 or had a vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe issue that worries us the most is the complacency amongst South Africans when they see the lockdown level dropping,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa reported 7,657 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday (13 June), 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<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/498353\/the-plan-to-help-save-south-africas-vaccine-rollout-aspen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The plan to help save South Africa\u2019s vaccine rollout: Aspen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng government says that it will support the introduction of stronger lockdown restrictions this week as the province struggles with an influx of Covid-19 cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":427518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-498371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498371","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=498371"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498615,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498371\/revisions\/498615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}