South African doctors on Saturday called for tougher lockdown restrictions amid increasing coronavirus pandemic cases as the country recorded 5,668 new infections overnight, resulting in 67 fatalities.
According to South African Medical Association (SAMA) chairperson Angelique Coetzee, stricter regulations are needed to stop the spread of Covid-19 because some members of the public are not adhering to the pandemic health protocols.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced new Level 2 lockdown restrictions which became effective on Monday this week.
This, however, needed to be reinforced by the government as the country was undergoing a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Coetzee said.
“I know I have been criticised for asking for stricter lockdowns or curfews over the weekend but the truth of the matter is that people don’t listen anymore. We need to protect the average person out there who is doing things correctly,” the SAMA chief said.
The 5,668 new coronavirus infections recorded in the last 24-hours took the country’s number of infections to 1,686,041 cases and deaths to 56,832 lives lost since March 2020 when the pandemic hit the country, the health ministry said.
Meanwhile, as the Covid-19 numbers continued to rise, health expert Tulio de Oliveira warned that immuno-compromised people could produce new coronavirus variants where the virus circulated and mutated within their bodies.
This posed extra danger in the never-ending war with the pandemic, de Oliveira said.
NM/jn/APA